1:20pm Wednesday 8th July 2009
By Barbara Jordan
A RUNCORN mum accused her former boyfriend of killing her toddler son after he lashed out at her in several violent attacks, Chester Crown Court heard yesterday.
Nichola Bowman, aged 24, described how Wayne Davenport, aged 26, flew into a rage when she tackled him about smoking cannabis.
She told police: “He didn’t like it. He lost his temper, dragged me out of the car and ripped my top off, leaving me in the street with my bra on.
“He was screaming and shouting.”
Bowman’s police statements were read out to the jury.
She recalled how another argument blew up into an assault.
“He said he’d give up seeing his daughter to see his friend,” Bowman told detectives.
“I asked him if he would give her up to spend time with me.
“He made the car swerve and started hitting me.
“He tried to drag me out of the car. He dragged the seatbelt around my neck, bit me and kicked me.
“I was frightened. He was a totally different person.
“He turned into a monster.”
On another occasion, she said, he kicked her out of the car on the Runcorn Widnes bridge, leaving her to walk in her pyjamas.
It was only after she left him, she realised he had been deceiving her.
“I didn’t think he was capable of nasty things to children because he has a child of his own,” she said.
Bowman defended Davenport when she was interviewed by detectives after being arrested in Warrington Hospital, hours after her two-year-old son, Joshua died at her home in Tilbury Place, Murdishaw, on November 6, 2007.
Davenport was alone with the child when he stopped breathing.
She said he was the first boyfriend who had treated her with affection, buying her flowers and cooking her meals.
She blamed Joshua’s bruises on tantrums.
She dispelled her family’s warnings about Davenport until her suspicions were confirmed after they separated, when he sent her a text.
“He said he was not himself during events leading up to my loss.
“He kept saying ‘sorry, I owe you’. I never knew what he meant.
“I think he’s hit my baby.
“I think Wayne could have been nasty towards him and harmed him on purpose.”
Bowman denies causing or allowing her son’s death.
Davenport, of Hale Road, Widnes, who works at 02 in Preston Brook, Runcorn, denies manslaughter or allowing the death of Joshua Jones.
The trial continues.
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