Closing arguments made in child killing trial

PROVIDENCE—A murder trial of a man charged with fatally beating his girlfriend’s 3-year-old nephew is heading to the jury after lawyers presented closing arguments Tuesday.

Jurors in Providence Superior Court will begin deliberating the fate of Gilbert Delestre on Wednesday after getting instructions from the judge.

Delestre is charged with killing Thomas “T. J.“ Wright in October 2004 because he was mad the boy made a mess in his Woonsocket apartment

Delestre testified Monday that he struck the child on the staircase, causing the toddler to flip backward down more than a dozen steps. But he said he did not mean to kill him and hit the boy only once.

His lawyer, Robert Mann, has asked jurors to acquit him of murder but convict him of manslaughter.

Delestre’s girlfriend and the child’s aunt, Katherine Bunnell, was convicted in May of second-degree murder and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

Wright and his two older brothers were living with the couple because their mother was in prison out of state for drug trafficking.

Prosecutors contend the pair were both responsible for the child’s death.

“He started it, she continued it, he finished it,“ said prosecutor Scott Erickson.