Nia Glassie's mother says she did not want to admit there was anything wrong when her toddler would not wake up the day after the Crown alleges the three-year-old was fatally kicked in the head.
Lisa Kuka has claimed she became aware all was not well in the early hours of Saturday, July 20, last year. When she arrived home on the Friday evening Nia was in bed and, she thought, asleep.
Nia never came out of a coma and died in Auckland's Starship Hospital 12 days later.
In the last of five lengthy video-taped interviews with police in the weeks following Nia's death, Detective Sergeant Garry Hawkins asked Kuka why she had not sought medical help.
She had no vehicle and there was no landline telephone in the house, 35-year-old Kuka said.
In the interview, screened in the High Court at Rotorua this morning at the trial of five people charged over Nia's death, Mr Hawkins questioned why Kuka did not ask one of the numerous people coming and going from the house on the Saturday, dropping stuff off for a party.
After a long pause, Kuka replied: "Cause at the time it was Michael's 21st, okay. It wasn't that I wanted to stay there and get drunk. I didn't want to know what happened."
She said she listened to Michael Curtis and his partner Oriwa Kemp who said Nia would be fine, despite the fact the child was still unconscious into the evening.
"Deep down inside I knew she wasn't fine."
Kuka's sister took the children, including the unresponsive Nia, to her home for the night of the party.
In the early hours of Sunday she woke Kuka, who accompanied her back home.
"When I went in and I saw Nia just lying, froth coming out of her mouth, smelling like urine hard, I was you know ..." said Kuka, who is charged with manslaughter for failing to provide medical treatment and failing to protect her daughter from violence.
She could not say if it was her or her sister who decided to go to the hospital.
In answer to the detective sergeant's questions, she agreed that Nia was "fitting" with her arms clenched and her legs rigid.
Asked if Nia had been like that the day before (Saturday), Kuka said: "No, um, might've. I don't know, I hardly checked on her - not that I didn't care but Wiremu (Kuka's partner) was always in the room with her. Michael was going in there. They were saying that she's alright at the time."
She added: "I know it sounds stupid - I wanted to take her but I listened to them. I couldn't stand going in there looking at her because I knew myself that she wasn't right. But I didn't do nothing about it.
"It was too late on Sunday and if I had done something on Friday she may still be there with me, but she's not."
An emotional Kuka told the detective sergeant before he arrested her that a constant question since had been why.
"Why her, why did I not do nothing, why didn't I seek medical advice ASAP, why?"
Justice Judith Potter sent the jury home for the afternoon while she hears legal arguments in chambers.
The crown case will conclude tomorrow.
Brothers Wiremu Curtis, 19, and Michael Curtis, 21, are accused of murdering Nia. Also charged with manslaughter are Michael Pearson, 20, and Oriwa Kemp, 18. Kuka is also on trial for Nia's manslaughter - for failing to provide medical treatment and failing to protect her daughter from violence.
