A three-year-old boy had duct-tape wrapped around his eyes and head by his stepfather because his mother could not stand the toddler staring at her, a Sydney jury has been told.
The witness told the murder trial the stepfather also forced the screaming, naked toddler into an esky full of ice and held the lid down for more than five minutes.
"I have never heard a person scream like that, I went outside because I couldn't take it anymore," the toddler's half-brother testified on Thursday.
The 25-year-old sibling, who can't be named for legal reasons, was appearing as a prosecution witness in the murder trial of the toddler's mother and stepfather.
The pair have both pleaded not guilty in NSW Supreme Court to murdering the boy, referred to as Timothy in court, in Oberon in NSW's central west in 2014.
The brother broke down as he told the jury of a number of incidents involving Timothy and the two accused.
He said the boy had tape wrapped over each eye and around his head because his mother was "sick of him staring" at her.
"My mother was sitting back having a smoke and (my stepfather) taped his eyes shut," he told the jury.
The half-brother said Timothy was "screaming because he wanted to get out" and tried to take the tape off but his hands were tied together.
On another occasion, he said his mother picked the boy up by the shoulders and "shook him aggressively" for a couple of minutes because he was staring at her.
"All I know is when (Timothy) was being shook ... his head was flopping back and forth," the 25-year-old said.
His mother and stepfather also taped a blanket around the toddler to stop him from picking his sores and jammed a plastic, tennis-size ball into his mouth and taped it shut.
"There was so much tape on him it covered him from his shoulders down, basically his entire torso," the sibling said.
The Crown alleges the mother inflicted a fatal injury on Timothy but the stepfather was complicit because he must have known she wanted to kill him.
The couple say he died after being tripped by a rope attached to the family's dogs.
The prosecution says they concocted that story after inflicting serious and prolonged abuse on the boy.
The trial is continuing.
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