The man accused of murdering a baby has told a jury he accidentally dropped the child, who fell and hit his head on a table, causing him to stop breathing.

The man says he panicked and shook the baby vigorously to revive him, then rushed out of the room with the baby and hit the baby’s head on the doorframe, accidentally.

Chance Aipolani-Nielson died two days later on December 17, 2021. The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. The Crown say Boston Wilson, 23, the baby’s uncle, struck him with lethal force. He denies the accusation and told the jury when he gave evidence on Thursday morning that Chance died because of a series of terrible “accidents”.

Wilson was alone with the baby at their house on Auckland’s North Shore on December 15 when he heard Chance coughing in his bedroom, he told the High Court at Auckland this morning.

 “I went in to check on him. I see Chance on the bed, and he was all white. He wasn’t the little brown boy I’m used to seeing. I panicked. I freaked out. I never seen my own kids all white.”

He is the father of four daughters, all preschoolers at the time of Chance’s death. He lived with the girls’ mother, his partner Darien Aipolani-Williams, as well as her sister Azure Aipolani-Nielson, Chance’s mother.

“So I scooped him up with my right arm under his bum and my left arm under his neck, or head. I had two knees on the bed. I went to hop off the bed and he slipped off my left arm, and his head hit the corner of the table and made a ‘donk’ sound.”

He said the baby stopped breathing, and was not responding. He put Chance back on the bed and performed CPR.

 “It didn’t work,” he said. “So I picked him up under his armpits and shook him vigorously and said, ‘Come on, my boy’, but he wasn’t responding.”

He thought the shaking lasted from five to 10 seconds.

“He went all floppy so I decided to put him back on the bed, and scooped him up again with one arm under his neck and one arm under his bottom.

“I was in a panic so I run out into the lounge to get my phone and call for help. I miscalculated the door to get out, and the corner of his head hit the doorframe.

“It was a hard hit. I was rushing.”

Crown prosecutors Alysha McClintock and Frances Rhodes wrapped up their case at 10.30 on Thursday morning. Wilson’s lawyers Lorraine Smith and Phil Hamlin then opened the defence, and called the accused to the witness stand.

He gave evidence to Hamlin for an hour. He approached the stand in tears. McClintock then began her cross-examination.

She said to him, “I suggest to you that after shaking Chance with extreme force you threw him in the direction of the table, his head hit the table and he fell on the ground. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

“Not correct,” he said.

The trial, before Justice Christine Gordon and a jury, continues.