The woman “wobbled a bit in her heels” and “nearly walked into the metal detector” as he helped her to exit Parliament to find Roberts-Smith,Nichols told the court. He said she declined to take the lift and proceeded down a flight of stairs instead.
When the woman was “some way towards the bottom of ...[the] first flight of stairs,she lost her balance and fell forward onto the stairs down at the bottom of the platform”,Nichols said. She fell “head first” down about six stairs,onto her left side,and he heard a “terrible thud” as she landed.
“Once I saw her fall ... I made my way down as quickly as I could to the landing. At the time she had not moved and she wasn’t saying anything and I was concerned for her health and safety,” Nichols said. “I was bending down just to check that she was okay as she regained consciousness and started to manoeuvre herself to a position where she could stand up again.”
Nichols said the woman had a “very large haematoma on the left side of her forehead above her eye,which I gather was as a direct result of landing head first on either the bottom of the stairs or the landing itself”. The injury was not there before the fall,he said.
He said the woman was “seeking to assure me that she was okay” and was asking again for Roberts-Smith.
The injury was “like a large egg,half an egg”,he told the court,as he gestured above his left eyebrow. “It was quite a substantial lump,” he said. He agreed it was a short distance above the woman’s left eyebrow.
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The newspapers’ barrister,Nicholas Owens,SC,did not seek to cross-examine Nichols on his evidence.
There is no dispute between the parties that Person 17 fell down the stairs while leaving the venue and hit her head and bruised her thigh. However,Person 17 has told the court she sustained a black eye when Roberts-Smith confronted her at their hotel room,accused her of making a “scene” at the dinner and punched her on the left side of her face and eye.
Person 17 gave evidence in March that “I don’t remember there being a bump on my head after the fall on the stairs”,although she did recall a bruise to her thigh.
“I fell down about,you know,two or three steps onto the landing,and I hit my head because I fell,” she said on March 22. “My head was sore. I was helped up,and then Ben came from the bottom of the stairs.”
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Roberts-Smith’s estranged wife,Emma Roberts,has told the court Person 17 appeared unannounced at the couple’s marital home on April 6,2018.
Roberts said Person 17 was “wearing a pink and black dress[and] black shoes” and a “big pair of black sunglasses”. She asked Person 17 to remove the sunglasses and saw that she had a black eye,Ms Roberts said.
She said Person 17 told her that she had fallen down a set of stairs while drunk at Parliament House.
During cross-examination in June last year,Roberts-Smith told the court that “I’ve never disputed the fact that I’ve had an affair with Person 17”. But he said he was separated at the time,a claim disputed by his estranged wife.
The trial continues.