<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">DERIDDER — As the second day of testimony in the trial of John W. Hatfield III continued in 36th Judicial District Court, the mother of slain 4-year-old Tanner Bailey, Kourtney Hatfield, took the stand.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">She recounted the day when her younger brother fatally stabbed her son in the chest. She said that while she knew her brother struggled with mental problems, she never expected he would harm her child.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">On Dec. 18, the day of the stabbing, Tanner’s mother said she left her son sleeping on the couch at her parents’ home while she went to her own house nearby to hide Christmas presents.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">She said her father called her and told her that Tanner had been stabbed, but that she was not told that Tanner had died until she arrived at the hospital.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Kourtney Hatfield referred to her brother’s insanity plea as “another cop-out in a lifetime of cop-outs,” and the state played a recorded interview between her and Hatfield in which she pleaded with him to change his insanity plea.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I want you to be a man and take responsibility for what you did,” she says in the video. “If we go to trial, they will make me testify to a jury about that day. I don’t want to relive that.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In the video, when asked by his sister why he stabbed the child, Hatfield talks about voices coming out of the TV telling him to stab Tanner “so that his soul could pass on to the heavens.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“They kept saying, ‘You better hope he doesn’t wake up,’ ” Hatfield tells her. He also says he was afraid Tanner would “jump up and fly and bite my neck.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Earlier Thursday morning, the trial was suspended and the courtroom emptied as a matter regarding a juror was discussed with Judge C. Kerry Anderson.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The juror was excused and replaced with an alternate when the trial resumed, but no reason was given by the court.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“It happens, and it happens often,” said District Attorney Jimmy Lestage. “That is why there is always an alternate selected for a trial.”</span>