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| The building that houses Shatin Court |
Merlyn Ando has denied she intended to hurt the infant because
of a grudge she held against her employer, Charlotte Chan.
She was arrested by police and charged with “Ill-treatment by those in charge of a
child or young person” after Chan blamed her for the incident on Aug. 13 last
year.
On the second and final day of the trial on Feb 1, Ando took
the witness stand to answer questions about what had led to the mother accidentally
bathing her daughter with the tainted water.
Also testifying this day was Chang Yu, a doctor at Prince of Wales Hospital in Shatin who
had treated the baby after the incident. He said the infant bore no signs of
injury apart from a redness on her arm and side.
Chan had accused
Ando of intending to cause harm by placing a plastic bottle filled with Chlorox
solution beside a bottle of Johnson’s baby shower gel on a rack for baby
toiletries. The employer had poured the tainted liquid into the baby’s bath, thinking it was the shower gel.
She said Ando
was to leave her flat the following day after resigning from her job, and had set up the incident in retaliation. The
Filipina had worked for Chan for one and a half years, starting in February
2017.
In her testimony, Ando said she
paid Chan a month’s wage for breaking her contract but the employer demanded another
month’s pay supposedly for “damages.”
At the
prompting of her counsel, John Murray, Ando recounted that she was cleaning the
bathroom that fateful day, and had brought with her a purple plastic bottle of
baby bath that was filled with a 50-50 mix of water and bleach that she used to
remove stains.
Ando told Murray
The maid said
she had just sprayed the stained tub when Chan called and ordered her to fetch her
eldest child, a 4-year-old boy, from the ground floor.
Ando had resumed
her work when Chan called again and told her to get the baby’s milk from the
car and put it in the refrigerator. Shortly later, Chan arrived and reportedly brought
up again the matter of who would lend Ando money to pay for the supposed
damages in her house.
Chan reportedly
got angry when Ando said her cousin had not yet given the money.
After this, Chan
told Ando to get the baby and take her to the bathroom. Ando said she was
confused by the overlapping errands that she forgot about her work in the
bathroom.
When she looked
inside the bathroom Ando said Chan was already bathing the baby in the tub.
Chan then asked why the water wasn’t bubbling. “I said I didn’t know why
because I didn’t prepare the bath.”
Chan asked what
was in the purple bottle and Ando did not reply. Another Filipina helper who
was in the house and was hired to replace Ando answered, “That’s bleach.”
Ando said Chan
took the baby from the tub right away and gave her to her husband, then pulled
the maid’s hair three times saying “I killed her child. I told her ‘I did not
kill your child. Sorry, it was an accident’.”
Cross examining
Ando, prosecutor James Cheng told her she deliberately put the purple bottle
next to the baby gel so Chan would likely use it to prepare the bath. The maid
replied it was only on that day that she put it there because she was cleaning.
“I put it to
you that you deliberately did not tell your employer there was bleach in the
purple bottle because you hold a grudge against her,” Cheng told Ando, but the
Filipina replied her focus was only on the money that Chan was demanding.
Cheng insisted
in his submission that the helper was lying and that she bore a grudge against
Chan, so she tried to get even by harming the baby.
