A man who denies killing his former partner during a violent argument was heard wailing incomprehensibly as he tried to resuscitate her the next day.
Danny Zayat, 30, had been in a volatile relationship with 34-year-old Tatiana Dokhotaru before she was found dead in her south-west Sydney apartment on a Saturday in May 2023.
Zayat is accused of murdering her the previous night after a physically violent and verbally abusive argument heard by neighbours on the 22nd floor of the Liverpool complex.
Two phone calls the concreter made to triple zero the day after the alleged murder were played to his NSW Supreme Court jury trial today.
During the calls, he can be heard at times wailing and speaking incoherently as the operator gave directions on how to administer CPR.
“She’s not breathing, she’s got blood coming out of her nose,” he said during the call.
“It looks like she’s been dead for a while.”
Police officers and paramedics arrived to find him crying and pleading for someone to help his ex-partner as she lay on the floor of her apartment.
Paramedics attempted to revive her but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
Before calling triple zero, Zayat was heard by neighbours running up and down the corridor outside calling for help.
Leo Nguyen lived in the apartment opposite and told the jury that he heard a male shouting and banging on the apartment doors outside.
“It just sounded like someone was in the hallway just crying, distressed,” he said from the witness box.
Zayat told police that Dokhotaru wanted to kill herself about a week before she was found dead in the apartment on May 23.
On police body-worn footage, he was seen asking police to check his phone for video footage taken on May 21.
He claimed the 34-year-old was drunk, tripped over and injured herself on that day before expressing thoughts of suicide.
“I took a video of it just for my own sake,” he told officers.
Dokhotaru’s next-door neighbours, Saska Simic and Husam Alsadi, told the court they heard expletives and thuds from the woman’s unit on the night of the alleged murder.
Alsadi also described muffled voices broken up by a male yelling “you f—— slut” and a woman yelling “get out, get out”.
“It sounded like it was very guttural,” he said of the male’s voice.
The neighbour went to his front door to check on the corridor and the neighbouring apartment.
When he stepped outside, the noises died down, the jury heard.
The couple then went out to their balcony but didn’t see or hear anything further.
Prosecutors allege Zayat had a tendency of violent, abusive behaviour to Dokhotaru which eventually turned deadly.
“Yes, hi. My ex-boyfriend’s here and he’s trying to kill me,” she had earlier told the operator.
An autopsy showed that Dokhotaru died from a brain injury caused by blunt force head trauma.
Zayat has pleaded not guilty to murder and denies being violent towards his former partner or having anything to do with her death.
He also faces an alternative charge of manslaughter.
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