Lachlan Jones’ neighbor says she heard 3-year-old the night he disappeared

A neighbor of Lachlan Jones says she heard him banging on his laundry room the night he disappeared, hours after his family was accused of killing him.

Three-year-old Gore was found in a municipal wastewater pond just over a kilometer from his home in January 2019.

Two police investigations found that Lachlan accidentally drowned after walking away, but Lachlan’s father has disputed these findings.

A coroner’s inquest is underway in Invercargill to find out what happened that night more than five years ago.

The first two witnesses, his mother Michelle Officer and half-brother Jonathan Scott, denied allegations that they killed Lachlan in the afternoon and stored his body in a freezer before dumping it in the sewage pond.

Neighbor Deborah Thurston told the inquest she heard him banging in his laundry room on the night he disappeared when his mother turned up.

His testimony was closely examined, asking him if he remembered hearing it or if he might have made a mistake or remembered it incorrectly.

Thurston said there was a knock on her door that night, and the officer came in and spoke briefly with her while she sat there.

He couldn’t see Lachlan, but heard his footsteps and knocks and saw that the officer was watching him, he said.

“I could hear them fighting.”

The officer told her she wouldn’t stay and that he needed to change her dirty diaper, before saying “shit, he’s gone again,” and she left, Thurston said.

The father’s lawyer, Max Simpkins, asked if his memory could have been affected by the media coverage.

“I heard Lachie. I know he was there.”

She told counsel assisting the coroner, Simon Mount KC, that it was the first she had heard of his takeoff so far, but that it was full that night.

He played a recording of the officer’s 111 call and heard Lachlan’s mother say he was at Thurston’s laundry, and Thurston seemed surprised and asked him what he was doing there in the first place.

The officer responded that he went to her house and was being funny.

Thurston said she didn’t think she was with the officer at the time and didn’t think it was his voice, before changing her mind and saying she didn’t remember being there but it sounded like her.

Mount asked her if she was sure it was Lachlan in her bathroom, and she said she was 99.9% sure, but she had empty spaces that night.

She said she took what people told her as gospel, and Mount asked her if she could have held on to Michelle Officer telling her she was at the laundromat instead of directly remembering that he was there.

During a lengthy interrogation, she said it was possible, especially after being accused of covering up his death, gossip and media coverage, but that she believed he was in her laundry room.

You had to keep an eye on him, he said.

“To me, Lachie was the kind of girl who would keep coming, even if you told her to stop.”

When the officer returned to Thurston’s home without finding Lachlan, she joined the search.

He remembered asking the girls in his garden if they had seen Lachlan, and they had, and they pointed in the direction he was running.

Simpkins questioned why he said he spoke to three girls in his police statement, but told the inquest it was two girls.

He never expected that his death would be the subject of an investigation and that his statement would be read in court and questioned.

“When I was asked these questions, no one said it was a statement to me, so I was very casual in what I said,” he said.

“But when it comes to the death, the drowning of a child, that’s totally different compared to the number of little girls who were outside their house playing safely.”

Simpkins questioned her about her call to the police on April 9 this year, saying that she had found a cannabis butt in her garage the night Lachlan was found dead, that the officer had asked for a hit, they lit it and they both hit a puff

She told the inquest that she rang again and said she was confused and did not believe it was that night as she was not smoking at the time due to her job and had only smoked with the officer once but had self-medicated.

The day after his death, she said the officer had said he had done it to himself by running away, but that she was shocked and frustrated with Paul at the time.

Simpkins asked if Lachlan used to hug her when they saw each other.

He sometimes did it when she visited, but he would also like to arrest people, handcuff them and take them to a “jail,” he said.

Lachlan was special to her and she had a special place for him, she said.

Back at the officer’s house, he recalled an angry exchange with his father, Paul Jones, who told him, “You should go to rehab.”

She said it was the second of the night that Jones confronted her during the search, “ranting and ranting at me” for not looking when she was.

rnz.co.nz