On one occasion, Mr Grant said, police woke him with a phone call at 3am to say they were searching his father’s house due to a concern for his welfare. He grimly steeled himself for a body to be located, however it was discovered that his father was staying with a relative at Tweed Heads and had just left his house open.
Mr Grant said there were several “notable incidents” of his father sleepwalking, including an incident when Mr Grant was about 14 of his father trying to climb out of a bedroom window in the middle of the night before being stopped by his wife.
“His eyes were open, he was upright, but he just didn’t look like he was with it,” Mr Grant said.
In another incident, Mr Grant awoke to find his cranky mother changing the sheets on her bed because his father had sleepwalked into the yard and activated sprinklers, then returned to bed while still wet, bringing grass and dirt with him.
Mr Grant detailed his own “embarrassing” experience with sleepwalking, when he was on a holiday with friends aged 17 and woke up in the house of a random woman who was poking him with a broom.
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“I didn’t know who this lady was; a complete stranger,” Mr Grant said. “She just kept repeating ‘who are you, who are you, get out, get out’.”
Mr Grant said he left the house and managed to find his way back to his holiday accommodation, and afterwards was given the nickname “Goldilocks”.
He recounted another sleepwalking incident, where he interrupted one of his mother’s Tupperware parties in 1988 to kneel in front of her and offer her a miniature cricket bat while wearing a blanket from his bed as a cape.
“It obviously brought a fair bit of laughter to the ladies at the Tupperware party,” Mr Grant said, adding that his actions became part of the family folklore.
Dr John O’Neill, a neurology specialist at St Vincent’s clinic, told the trial Kenneth Grant has remained consistent in his account of what happened on the evening of the crash, including having no memory of key events.
Dr O’Neill said Mr Grant “clearly looked intoxicated” in police dash cam footage, but he does not think alcohol alone would have caused amnesia. The specialist said he thought the most likely cause for the memory loss was transient global amnesia.
Mr Grant said since his father has been charged, “to my knowledge, he hasn’t drunk … he swears he hasn’t touched a drop”.
The trial continues.
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Source: | This article originally belongs to smh.com.au
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