A MEDICAL expert has backed defence claims that a baby was killed by a tragic accident rather than after an attack by his father.Four week old Luigi Askew died after suffering head and stomach injuries at his Lanercost Way home in Ipswich.
A MEDICAL expert has backed defence claims that a baby was killed by a tragic accident rather than after an attack by his father.
Four week old Luigi Askew died after suffering head and stomach injuries at his Lanercost Way home in Ipswich.
His father, Duncan Mills, 32, of London Road, has denied murdering Luigi and causing his ex-girlfriend grievous bodily harm on May 26 last year.
His defence claims that a chair fell on the baby during a heated row between Mills and the baby's 23-year-old mother Samantha Askew and then both adults had fallen onto the chair.
The prosecution said Luigi's injuries were caused by Mills grabbing the baby, shaking him, squeezing him and striking him.
During the Ipswich Crown Court trial consultant neuropathologist Dr Waney Squire said: “The baby has impact injuries. There is no doubt in my mind at all that impact is responsible for the baby's brain damage.”
Dr Squire said that “greater force” than shaking would have been needed to cause the damage to Luigi's brain stem.
She added that the impact of a fall followed by a chair falling on top of him and then the adults falling on top of the chair would have caused “much greater force”.
Dr Squire said the baby's blood shot eye and bleeding on the brain was often evidence of “Shaken Baby Syndrome” but she said the “retinal haemorrhaging” was often much more severe in such cases than it was in Luigi's.
She said that if Luigi's broken ribs were evidence of him being gripped tightly and shaken they would have been broken on both sides.
She said: “The fractured ribs were on one side and therefore it is unlikely that you could shake a baby with one hand.”
She added: “The baby shaking evidence is not very good but the evidence of impact is so much more likely. I think blunt impact to the head could certainly cause the sort of injuries we have here.”
The trial continues.
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