PROVIDENCE –– The night 3-year-old Thomas J. “T.J.” Wright was beaten to death, a relative tried desperately to save him, only to have T.J.’s foster mother snatch the child from his arms and curse him for dialing 911.

Jose A. Santiago said that, when he handed Katherine Bunnell the cordless telephone, she hung up rather than stay on the line with the 911 operator and walk him through the procedure for CPR.

Instead of being grateful about the call, “it was more like she was angry,” Santiago said.

“Why, why did I do that?” he said, describing her reaction.

“To me, it felt like disbelief.”

Santiago offered the testimony yesterday, at Bunnell’s trial on murder charges in Superior Court.

An inmate at the Adult Correctional Institutions, where he is finishing a one-year sentence for felony assault, he testified in handcuffs, flanked by deputy sheriffs, and challenged on every major point by Gerard H. Donley, Bunnell’s defense lawyer, who accused him of trying to make Bunnell look bad to help her co-defendant, Gilbert Delestre, beat the rap.

Santiago, 31, and Delestre, 27, are cousins. Like Bunnell, Delestre has been charged with murder and conspiracy to murder. He is at the ACI awaiting trial.

After Bunnell hung up, Santiago said he grabbed T.J. from her and took the child downstairs into the living room of her Woonsocket apartment, where he tried to perform CPR.

“I sat there, blew into his mouth. I exhaled him. Nothing,” Santiago testified.

“I resumed to breathe into his mouth again,” he continued. “That’s when Katie came and snatched him from my arms.”

“I grabbed him back. It was just a reaction,” he testified.

“I punched her in the face.”

The ambulance arrived, and Santiago carried T.J. out to the paramedics. The toddler was taken to Landmark Medical Center, then to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, where he was determined to be brain dead and taken off life support.

Prosecutors contend Bunnell, 24, and Delestre beat T.J. to death because they were angry about a mess he had made in their living room.

The chain of events that led to the child’s death began the evening of Oct. 29, 2004, when Bunnell and Delestre went out drinking with Santiago, who had just completed an earlier sentence at the ACI.

T.J. and his brothers, David, 10, and Mickey, 6, were left with a baby sitter, along with Bunnell’s daughters by Delestre — Destiny, 7, and Daziya, 5.

When Santiago and the couple returned home for the night, Santiago testified, Bunnell discovered the mess and demanded that Delestre come inside to clean it.

Santiago remained outside in the parking lot, where he became sick, throwing up and stumbling around the apartment complex. He said he was unaware that, inside the apartment, Bunnell and Delestre were beating T.J.

While he was outside in the parking lot, Bunnell drove past him in her car, taking the baby sitter home, he testified.

He was still outside in the parking lot when she returned to the apartment and started to yell. Santiago said he thought she was yelling because she and Delestre were having a fight.

He went inside, he said, went upstairs to the second-floor bedroom, and pulled Delestre away from Bunnell, Santiago testified.

“She turned around and was like, ‘Jose, the baby’s not breathing,’ ” he said.

It was then, Santiago said, that he called 911. Prosecutors played a tape of the 911 call for the jury yesterday. They also read a letter written to T.J.’s mother –– Bunnell’s sister, Karen Wright.

“If it wasn’t for me trying to do what I did, no one would have tried to help the baby and dial 911,” Santiago said in the letter, written 16 days after the fatal beating.

“I gave Katie the phone and she winds up hanging up the phone and screaming at me for dialing 911.”

“Mr. Santiago, is it fair to say you were drunk out of your mind?” Bunnell’s lawyer demanded on cross-examination.

“I was drunk, sir,” Santiago acknowledged.

“You sobered up pretty quickly when you saw that baby,” Assistant Attorney General Stacey P. Veroni said after Donley asked the question.

Donley objected. Judge Gilbert V. Indeglia overruled the objection. Santiago answered yes.

jcastell@projo.com