A two-year-old girl screamed she ‘didn’t want to go home’ just days before she was killed by her stepfather, a murder trial has heard.
Little Lola James pleaded with her mum’s best friend that she did not want to go home to stepfather Kyle Bevan, 31.
The court heard friend Casey Morgan urged mother Sinead James, 30, to leave her ‘angry and aggressive’ partner in the weeks leading to the attack.
Giving evidence at Swansea Crown Court, Miss Morgan said James repeatedly left Lola with her while Bevan took drugs and acted aggressively inside the home.
Miss Morgan said: ‘Sinead’s house was dirty and horrible. Lola didn’t want to go home. She was screaming she didn’t want to go home.’
The court heard that little Lola James often stayed at the house of Casey Morgan
Sinead James, of Neyland, denies causing the death or allowing the death of a child
The court heard Miss Morgan made multiple attempts to get James to leave Bevan before he showed up at her house ‘foaming at the mouth’.
She said: ‘I told Sinead that she wasn’t getting Lola back until she got rid of him.
‘I said if Sinead didn’t get rid of him, ‘he would hurt her. Something bad is going to happen to Sinead’.’
The court heard James had taken Lola to Miss Morgan’s house on the evening of May 14, 2020, just two months before the attack.
Miss Morgan said she received a call from her friend with ‘commotion’ in the background and knew she needed to meet her straight away.
Kyle Bevan, 31, is on trial at Swansea Crown Court and has denied a charge of murder
She said: ‘She phoned me. She said you need to come and get Lola. She sounded scared. She was crying. You could hear a commotion going on.
‘I knew I had to go. I knew I had to put my shoes on and I had to go.
‘When I met her she told me he was smashing up the house and he had punched a light switch and it was off. She said he was going mad. He was losing the plot.
‘I was angry at Sinead because she didn’t stay at my house and settle Lola. She just went and carried on with him.’
James, of Neyland, denies causing or allowing the death of a child. Bevan, of Aberystwyth, denies murder.
The trial, due to last four weeks, continues.
