A MAN accused of murdering his baby daughter told a court yesterday he shook her "because I thought she was dying".
Giving evidence on the eve of the third anniversary of Caragh Walsh's death, Christopher O'Neill (26) said he would "never" have done anything to harm the little girl.
O'Neill, from Whiterock Road in west Belfast, denies the murder of three-month-old Caragh who died on February 7, 2014, two days after being rushed to hospital from her Glasvey Park home in Twinbrook.
Asked by defence lawyer Patrick Lyttle how he felt when his daughter was born in October 2013, O'Neill told his Craigavon Crown Court trial in Armagh on Monday: "I was happy... proud", adding later: "I loved her to bits, I didn't want to leave her, I just wanted to be with her all of the time."
He said in his month and a half of paternity leave, and after they'd moved into their own flat in Twinbrook, he "did most of the looking after of baby Caragh" and later would rush home from work to be with her.
Taking him to the events of that "fateful day... that terrible day", Mr Lyttle asked how he felt when Caragh suddenly awoke in her bouncer with a "painful cry", and was later rushed to hospital in an ambulance after he had shaken her and given her mouth-to-mouth in an effort to revive her.
O'Neill told the court he was "scared... because I knew something was wrong", thinking "that she was dying", and that "I just wanted her not to die. I just wanted to help her".
Although he accepted that at one stage he lifted her up in front of him and "shook her", he told the jury of 10 men and one woman he did not know how many times he did so.
The defence lawyer said: "Mr O'Neill, the prosecution case, in a nutshell, is that you deliberately hurt your daughter, that you lost control, that you swung her by the arms and limbs."
"I would never hurt my daughter," said O'Neill. "That's completely wrong. I was trying to help her."
"Why shake her?" asked Mr Lyttle.
"Because I thought she was dying and to this day I have had to live with the fact that I didn't help her enough," he said.
Under cross-examination from Toby Hedworth, O'Neill accepted the youngster was healthy and well when left in his care, and that after she had unexpectedly taken ill "in a very bad way", he thought he would "help her by picking her up and shake her with all the risks attached to that".
He agreed that all his attempts to resuscitate Caragh before calling for help "made no difference", but maintained he "wasn't thinking in a normal way at all... I was trying to help her".
"Why were you so reluctant, Christopher O'Neill, to dial 999 from the outset?" asked the prosecutor, before suggesting: "You were thinking you didn't want to ring 999 because you would be found out."
"No," said O'Neill.
Mr Hedworth continued: "Because unfortunately on that late morning when left alone, it all got a bit too much for you... on this occasion she wouldn't stop crying and you couldn't get her to stop".
"That wasn't the case, no," replied O'Neill.
The lawyer also said: "Unfortunately Mr O'Neill that late morning you were no longer a caring man, you became an angry man", before putting it to him that that in his "anger... you became very rough indeed with her, did you not".
"Never," he said.
In a re-examination by his own counsel, O'Neill insisted that he "did the best thing I thought of when she was losing consciousness", and complained about people talking about him having shaken "my baby".
"I never lost it with my daughter... I just loved her to bits," he said.
