Son ‘wasn’t waking up,’ tearful mom testifies at murder trial

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This article was published 02/02/2021 (1378 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Allen Beardy told police 22-month old Drake Catcheway fell down and hurt his head three times in the hours before he was found not breathing in the basement of a Winnipeg home.

But the boy’s mother told a judge Tuesday that Beardy made no mention of Drake hurting himself until after paramedics arrived at the home on Idlewild Bay.

Beardy, 25, is on trial, charged with second-degree murder in Drake’s August 2018 death.

April Thompson, Drake’s mother and Beardy’s then girlfriend, said paramedics trying to resuscitate Drake asked Beardy what happened.

“He tried saying Drake fell (earlier in the evening at Thompson’s Redwood Avenue home),” she said. “I asked him what he was talking about,” but Beardy had no reply, she said.

Thompson told court she, Drake and Beardy arrived at Beardy’s mother’s Idlewild Bay home sometime before 10 p.m. with the intention of spending the night.

Thompson said she was in the kitchen washing dishes around 10 p.m. when Beardy took Drake to the basement to put him to bed.

Thompson said Beardy returned a few minutes later and they started watching a movie in the living room. After a few minutes, Beardy said he was going downstair to change for the night, but returned minutes later wearing the same clothes, Thompson said.

“I said ‘I thought you were going to change?’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s why I went downstairs.’”

Beardy went to the basement a third time, returned a couple of minutes later and “said he was worried about a bump on Drake’s head,” Thompson said. “I said, ‘What bump?’”

Thompson wiped tears from her face as she described finding Drake on a mattress, not breathing.

“I saw my son sleeping in the corner,” she said. “I tried to wake him up and he wasn’t waking up.”

“He wasn’t breathing?” Crown attorney Michelle Bright asked.

“No,” Thompson said.

Thompson said she called 911 before Thompson’s sister, who arrived at the house with her boyfriend minutes earlier, took over the call.

“Allen brought (Drake) upstairs,” she said. “He laid him down and started doing CPR on him. I’m not sure he knew how.”

In a subsequent police interview, Beardy told investigators Drake had fallen on his head three times that day: once as he and the boy’s mother were packing to leave for his mother’s house, a second time when he fell off a bed, and a third time when he was jumping on a couch at Beardy’s mother’s house.

Thompson said she continued to see Beardy off and on for the next month, not thinking he had anything to do with Drake’s death, she said.

But Beardy changed, she said.

“He was different, he was being aggressive, he was drinking more,” she said.

After Drake’s funeral, family members told Thompson of a cut to his head she hadn’t noticed before.

“I didn’t think anything of it until my cousin accused (Beardy) of hurting my baby,” she said.

When Thompson confronted Beardy with the allegation, “he wasn’t willing to discuss it,” she said. “He got mad and just walked away.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca