Judge Netti C. Vogel listens as prosecutor Stacey Veroni, holding a photo of 3-year-old Thomas J. Wright, gives an opening statement to jurors in Gilbert Delestre’s murder trial in Superior Court, Providence, yesterday.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

PROVIDENCE

The defense lawyer for Gilbert Delestre — charged with beating his girlfriend’s 3-year-old nephew Thomas J. Wright to death — said Delestre hit the boy, causing him to fall down the staircase of their Woonsocket apartment, but he did not intend to kill him.

Delestre, 25, tried to catch the child as he tumbled down the stairs but was unable to and “he went down hard” and was badly injured, lawyer Robert Mann told the jury yesterday during opening statements in the murder trial at Superior Court.

Delestre will testify that he lied to the police when they came to his apartment and that he tried to blame the babysitter, Mann said. He is sorry for his actions and will take responsibility for them when he testifies in the coming days, Mann said. He asked the jury to acquit Delestre of murder and conspiracy and instead find him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Prosecutors said Delestre and Katherine Bunnell, 24, took turns beating Thomas on Oct. 29, 2004, after returning home at 2:30 a.m. from a night out and becoming enraged when they discovered the boy had spilled yogurt and milk on the new living-room rug.

Bunnell and Delestre were caring for Thomas and his brothers Mickey and David in addition to their own two daughters, Destiny and Dasiya, while Bunnell’s sister Karen Wright was serving time in an Illinois prison for trafficking marijuana.

Bunnell and Delestre blamed each other for inflicting the injuries that ultimately caused the boy’s death so they were tried separately. Bunnell was convicted of second-degree murder and conspiracy to murder in May and sentenced to life in prison with the chance of parole.

T.J., as Thomas was called, was 36 inches tall and had a smile that lit up a room, said prosecutor Stacey Veroni, during her opening statement. On Oct. 29, T.J. was probably looking forward to Halloween but that day never came for him, she said. Veroni held up a picture of a smiling boy with twinkling eyes.

On Oct. 29 he was transferred from Landmark Medical Center, in Woonsocket, to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Providence. “By noontime on Oct. 31, he had been declared brain-dead and taken off life support,” Veroni said.

She held up a photograph of the lifeless boy in a diaper lying on a medical examiner’s table with dark bruises covering his body.

Evidence would show that T.J. was beaten to death by Bunnell and Delestre, Veroni said. Medical experts, she said, would testify that he died of his injuries, which included head trauma — his brain was so swollen it had no place to go and went through the base of his skull, she said. His upper left leg was broken.

Lt. Edward Bertholic, a Woonsocket Fire Department rescue worker who answered a call of a baby not breathing at Delestre and Bunnell’s apartment at 2229 Diamond Hill Rd. at around 3:25 a.m. Oct. 29, testified that the boy was so bruised he looked like he had been in a boxing match.

Bertholic said he took the boy to Landmark and then to Hasbro and that the boy did not regain consciousness during transport.

Veroni told the jury that Delestre and Bunnell tried to blame the babysitter, Kayla Roderick, who was watching the boy while the couple was out. Patrolman Peter Menard testified that when he responded to Bunnell and Delestre’s apartment, Bunnell told him the babysitter slapped the baby. He said that when Delestre took him upstairs to show him where he had found T.J. his two brothers were on a bed and when he went to ask them what happened Delestre said, “Tell the police what the [expletive] babysitter did.”

Roderick is expected to testify today.

tpina@projo.com