A woman accused of murdering Liam Fee told police she’d been playing “high fives” with him on the day he died, a court heard.
A jury heard that Nyomi Fee, 29, told Constable Dorothy Millar that the Fife two-year-old “liked to high five” – lifting up his arm and smacking palms with her.
In an interview statement she gave a few days after Liam was found dead in the flat Fee shared with Liam’s mum Rachel Trelfa, she added: “He would mimic with his hands and he would copy me.”
A jury at the High Court in Livingston previously heard medical evidence that the tragic toddler had a broken arm and a broken thigh which would have caused him pain if he moved.
In Fee’s statement, which she signed on every page after it was read back to her, she said she had played with Liam in the afternoon while Trelfa was out looking after her horse.
She said Trelfa returned home at about 6.15pm on the night Liam died and they poured themselves glasses of vodka and fizzy orange and put on some music.
“Liam was nodding off in his buggy so we decided to put him in his room,” she said.
“I think it was around 6.30pm – Rachel hadn’t been back that long.
“Rachel and I went to the living room and put on a Clubland CD to listen to some music.
“It wasn’t loud enough to annoy the neighbours but we couldn’t hear the kids playing in their room as the door was closed.”
Nyomi said she shut Liam in his bedroom asleep in his buggy with the door shut.
When she went to check on him at around 7.40pm, she found the buggy had been moved forward to a new position.
She said Liam was lying lifeless in it with his face partly covered with a blanket.
“He was so white,” she told police, “so I pulled the blanket off him.
“I picked up his hands and they were floppy. I just knew he was dead because he was so white.
“I screamed for Rachel and she came straight through. She started screaming: ‘Call an ambulance’. I dialled 999 then I got Liam.
“Rachel had collapsed on the floor all crunched as if her legs wouldn’t support her.”
Fee gave details about her desperate battle to save Liam by giving him cardio-pulmonary resuscitation before paramedics arrived.
She told Constable Millar: “I did it over and over but it wasn’t working. Everything around me stopped mattering.”
Trelfa, 31, and Fee both deny murdering Liam at a house near Glenrothes in March 2014 and attempting to defeat the ends of justice by blaming another child for his death.
The couple, who are civil partners, also deny a catalogue of child abuse allegations.
Earlier the jury heard evidence from wound nurse Pauline Emslie, 47.
She said the accused brought a boy they blame for Liam’s death to her for examination.
She said she found a pressure ulcer on his toe and skin grafts “very badly infected” with redness spreading up the foot.
“Rachel was very surprised and asked how this could have happened,” she said.
“I explained to her that infections do sometimes happen in children.
“I did ask when she thought the infection had started. She said it must have just happened.
“I think it would have been very difficult not to notice that the feet were like that. They’d have been very painful and it looked like the infection was well established.”
Asked if the wounds would have been painful, she replied: “Very much so. Yes. I contacted the health visitor and also the child protection adviser at the Sick Children’s Hospital.
“I had concerns because after the initial injury there seemed to be a delay in seeking medical advice because the wounds were very deep, and this time it was an infection that had not been noticed.”
The trial, before Lord Burns, continues.
