A MAN accused of killing his partner’s two-year-old girl has given his account of what he said happened.

Kyle Bevan, 31, of Aberystwyth, denies the murder of Lola James in July 2020.

On Wednesday morning, Swansea Crown Court heard the accounts he gave officers in the days after the incident.

“Are you directly responsible in causing the injuries to Lola?,” officers asked him.

“No, not directly,” he replied.

“I was in the cupboard trying to get cereal out of the cupboard like.

“I was up all night. I was downstairs. I could see Lola at the top of the stairs with nothing on.

“She went to bed with a nappy on. She must have pulled it off.

“I asked her do you want cereal babe? She said yeah.

“The dog’s obviously heard us talking. Next thing I know I hear I think it was two or three massive bangs.

“She’s on the floor.

“That’s where I panicked.

“I just thought she was knocked out. I noticed she was snoring. Then I realised that was her swallowing her own tongue.

“I picked her up and put her on the sofa.”

In an interview on July 18, Bevan told officers that he moved her to the sofa, put a blanket in her mouth to stop her biting her tongue, tried to apply first aid, and put her in the recovery position. He then said he called his mum, a trained nurse, for advice.

“The only thing I really really really beat myself up for is ringing my mum first rather than the ambulance,” he said.

“Is there a reason you didn’t phone the ambulance first?” asked the officers.

“Pure panic at first,” he said. “I didn’t want Sinead to wake up to this,” before adding that he thought Lola was just unconscious.

When asked whether he searched for anything on his phone, he said no.

Upon inspecting his phone, officers found searches for ‘loss of consciousness’ and ‘baby hit head’.

Western Telegraph: Lola James died in hospital on July 21, 2020.Lola James died in hospital on July 21, 2020. (Image: Dyfed-Powys Police)

In a third interview, he admitted Googling ‘What do you do when someone’s unconscious’.

Bevan said the children’s mother, Sinead James – who denies causing or allowing her daughter's death – went to bed at around 8-9pm, and he did not see her until the morning.

However, after speaking to James, officers asked Bevan about her hearing “a loud bang and a scream” and getting up and seeing Bevan in Lola’s room.

Initially, Bevan denied this, but then told officers that when he was changing Lola’s sheets, she had fallen from the ladder on her bunk bed onto the floor.

Bevan initially said he stayed downstairs all night watching videos on his Xbox. When interviewed again on July 20, Bevan admitted  he had gone upstairs during the night.

He said he heard Lola playing with her toys at around 4.30am, so went to get her and gave her “a dessert spoon” of Calpol.

“I thought she might be under the weather to be up that late,” he said.

When asked whether he checked whether Lola was unwell, he replied: “I don’t have a temperature dial.

“I just knew.”

Bevan said the dog, which he described as a “cross Staff”, had knocked the children over before.

“She’s lovely. Gets overexcited. She’s very strong. She’s heavy and very strong,” he said.

“It’s knocked them over a few times.”

He said the youngest child had been knocked over by the dog “about two days before” the incident with Lola.

And in his second interview, Bevan said that Lola sustained injuries to her face days before the incident, after being knocked over by the dog.

“She was stood up [on the sofa] and the dog knocked her off balance and she went falling. And she faceplanted. Her face went whack straight on the table.”

Bevan said he did not call an ambulance as he knew it wasn’t broken – although it caused bruising on her nose, and they took her to see Casey Morgan’s nan, who was medically trained.

“She really was in the wars,” Bevan said.

The trial continues.