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Nevaeh Ager, who was killed by her father, Aaron Izett, in Little Waihi in 2019.
Aaron George Izett has been found guilty of the murder of his two-year-old daughter Nevaeh Ager after a failed attempt to plead a defense of insanity.
The jury, seven men and five women, delivered their verdict on Thursday after about 10 hours of deliberation, the culmination of a 12-day trial in Rotorua High Court.
Izett was also found guilty of one count of battery against Nevaeh’s great-grandfather, John Sturgess, and guilty of one count of injuries against Sheriff Major Andrew McDonald, who was bitten while under arrest.
He was found not guilty of a charge that with intent to cause GBH he injured Jacob Reid.
Izett never denied killing his daughter. On the opening day of the trial, defense attorney Nicholas Chisnall told the jury that Izett “accepted that he killed his daughter.”
Benn Bathgate / Stuff
Aaron George Izett admitted to killing his daughter, although he denied the murder.
“He accepts that he is responsible for his death … the physical act is not in dispute,” he said.
Chisnall claimed, however, that his client should be found not guilty on grounds of insanity.
The Crown alleged that Izett, a habitual methamphetamine user, killed his daughter in a “meth attack” by assaulting her with a weapon or weapons and then placing her in the estuary behind her home to drown.
Crown prosecutor Anna Pollett said the girl had been subjected to “assault for assault for assault” before drowning.
It was a trial that depended less on what Izett had done, the only act that he denied was hurting Jacob Reid, who was cut in the neck with some kind of blade, but on whether he had a ‘disease of the mind’, or was crazy , at the time of the murder and other alleged crimes.
Izett will be sentenced on February 3, 2021.
