Lachlan Jones was 3-year-old when he died in 2019. Photo: Supplied via NZ Herald
- A Gore resident says she was told Lachlan Jones' half brother threw him in an sewage oxidation pond
- Counsel for the coroner says his half brother denied this and the friend denied having this conversation and initially denied sending the texts
- 3-year-old Lachlan Paul Graham Jones could not be revived after being discovered unresponsive in the oxidation pond in January 2019
- Two police investigations found the boy accidentally drowned but his father Paul Jones disputes this and says the investigation was botched
- The inquest into his death has entered its second phase in Invercargill after a three-week long hearing in May
A Gore woman says a friend claimed Lachlan Jones' half-brother told him he threw the 3-year-old into the sewage oxidation pond where he was later found dead.
Lachlan Paul Graham Jones was discovered unresponsive in an oxidation pond in January 2019, just over one kilometre from where he lived.
The woman, who has name suppression, told a coronial inquest that some time after Lachlan died, her friend, Tyler Tremaine, told her that Lachlan's half-brother, Jonathan Scott, claimed he "grabbed him and threw him in".
Tremaine had visited her to drop off a bag of marijuana, she said. They started smoking when she brought up Scott and that was when he told her - "too casual for my own liking".
"It made me sick," she said.
The woman knew Scott's family growing up, and described him as mean and liking to terrorise her.
She said he and his older brother previously dragged her towards a river before her mum intervened, and shook a tree she was climbing until she fell out.
Counsel assisting the coroner Simon Mount KC said Tremaine denied the conversation and initially denied the messages.
Mount also said Scott denied this happening and questioned whether she was doing it for money. She denied that she was.
Lawyer for police, Robin Bates, questioned why she did not approach police until May this year. She said she did not want to come forward until she had "physical proof".
She had an old Facebook account she believed had some messages with him that sounded related and dodgy, but said she had lost access to the account and her prior experiences with the police made her hesitant to come forward.
She was at a daily report-in with police when she saw news of the inquest and messaged Tremaine at the station.
"Bro, do you remember how you said Johnny Scott said he threw that boy in the pond. Straight up, bro, it's on the f***ing news," she said.
He replied: "Yeah, I told yah haha".
"You should really go to the pigs, bro. It's a three year old boy. Johnny is f***ed up in the head for that. That's disgusting," she said.
"Nah, I'm staying out of it. Lol," he said.
On the stand, she confirmed she was struggling with substance abuse at the time, but said she was sobering up and would not make this up.
Counsel for Lachlan Jones and Jonathan Scott's mother, Beatrix Woodhouse, said Tremaine has explained that he sent the text message because he did not want to be associated with her, wanted to shut down the conversation and there was no truth to what he said.
She told Mount that Tremaine did not indicate if Lachlan was alive or not.
Gore resident Tremaine said what another witness had claimed was not true and Jonathan Scott had never said he had thrown his half brother into the pond.
He only responded to her text message like that to try to shut the conversation down and wished he had corrected her but he had no good explanation as to why he didn't, he said.
Scott was one of the first friends he ever made and they had grown apart over the year but were still friends, he said.
He told the inquest he didn't speak to Scott about Lachlan apart from when Scott told him Lachlan had died.
Lachlan's father's lawyer, Max Simpkins, questioned Tremaine over the text message, saying he lied to the police by denying having the text exchange with the other witness.
After a lengthy exchange, Tremaine accepted that, but said his only discussion about this was what was captured in the texts and it didn't mean anything, he just wanted to end the conversation with her.
Mount KC asked him about a message from Scott when Tremaine found out Lachlan was dead.
"You remembered ... Johnny said something like 'You've never met my brother, aye? Haha, well you won't because he's dead," Mount said.
He agreed that Scott might have been making light of the situation but said everyone handled grief differently.
Scott said it was disgusting that his family had been accused of harming Lachlan.
He denied he had ever said or done that and said he would never even joke about throwing his brother into the pond.
A lot of allegations had been made against his family but they had been debunked, he said.
"I think it's disgusting because I love my little brother."
When asked about how he treated another witness as a child, he said children would play fights and the stories had been completely made up to make him look bad.
