The 22-year-old father of the boy told Stuff Mustafa had vomited and was choking, so he started “tapping” his son’s back and bum “a little” to wake him up.
“To get any reaction from him – like if he’s really doing that or just joking,” he said.
On Saturday, his wife had left for a birthday party – leaving the father and son home alone to rest.
He said when feeding the boy he vomited and needed to be cleaned up, making the dad “nervous” and “scared”.
“I don’t know what to do because I was alone, home by myself and that’s my first time having an encounter that… nothing came up in my mind, my mind was all empty.
“I tried to give him CPR… still didn’t respond and I just lifted him up and ran straight to the hospital. And lucky that’s when my wife arrived, so I gave Mustafa to her. I told her ‘he choked, something’s blocking, he cannot breathe, let’s just hurry up and take him to the hospital’.”
Sadly, the boy was not able to be resuscitated by doctors and died.
The father told Stuff he is worried police may charge him over his son’s death.
But it’s not the first time baby Mustafa has been hurt.
The father admitted his son suffered fractures to his collarbone and ribs, as well as bleeding on the head and neck when he was three months old. He said the pair fell down the stairs together when he tripped.
He said Oranga Tamariki was involved and Mustafa put into his grandparents’ care for about three months following the fall. He returned to his parents in February.
Oranga Tamariki’s Rachel Leota confirmed the agency had prior involvement with the family.
“As this matter is the subject of an active police investigation, we cannot go into further details,” she told Newshub.
“Oranga Tamariki continues to assist police in trying to understand the circumstances that led to this death.”
Pitkethley on Sunday said they had been speaking to the baby’s family members, including his parents, as they establish how he came to be so badly injured.
“The investigation is in its early stages and there is a lot of work ahead of us as we gather information,” he said on Monday.