A teenage father has been jailed for eight years after admitting killing his 23-day-old daughter by shaking her.
Thomas Haining, who was aged 19 at the time, had been charged with murdering Mikayla, but prosecutors accepted his guilty plea to a lesser charge of culpable homicide.
While the baby’s mother Shannon Davies slept upstairs at their Inverness home, he took the baby out of her Moses basket.
He said she had been crying more than usual and suffering from diarrhoea for two or three days.
But Edinburgh’s High Court heard he had Googled “What happens when a newborn is shake [sic] hard”, “newborn in a coma” and “baby took a panic attack and now she’s unresponsive” just an hour before he woke Ms Davies to say Mikayla had “gone floppy”.
She later died after suffering several broken ribs and a skull fracture as a result of her head being hit on a door.
Haining, now 21, was yesterday sentenced to eight years in prison after a murder charge was reduced to culpable homicide, to which he pleaded guilty.
Paramedics were called to the family home in Inverness on June 8, 2017, and took Mikayla to hospital where she was placed in intensive care with a ventilator, having suffered a cardiac arrest as a result of the head trauma.
Later the same day she was taken off life support and and died in her mother’s arms at 4.46pm.
After two years of denial, Crown prosecutors accepted a guilty plea from Haining on September 5.
Shelagh McCall QC, representing Haining, told the court he was prepared for a lengthy period in jail and that he now “hated” himself. She claimed the killer panicked after the event but he now wishes he had come clean about his actions sooner.
Ms McCall said: “He described himself as reflecting that he should have ‘manned up’ at that time and told the truth, as a clear acknowledgement from Mr Haining that he was solely responsible for what happened and that he ought to have told the truth far sooner than he did.” She added: “He is preparing for a significant custodial sentence, he feels this is justified due to the severity of his actions, stating that he is disgusted with himself, that he hated himself for what he has done.”
The court heard Haining had a troubled upbringing and a history of violence as a teenager, although he had no previous criminal convictions. The former shop assistant began a relationship with Ms Davies, who moved in with him in Inverness. Her pregnancy was planned and Mikayla was born a healthy baby on May 17, 2017, at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.
She died there just three weeks later. Medical experts who reviewed CT images of her body concluded she suffered brain injuries which were “catastrophic and un-survivable”, the court was told.
Speaking after Haining admitted his guilt last month, Ms Davies said: “He’s dead to me – I never want to see him again. He’s a vile human being who shouldn’t be allowed to walk this earth. “He’s a waste of oxygen. I want him to rot in hell and suffer the pain he put Mikayla through but 10 times as bad.
Everyone knows what happens if you shake a baby so there is no excuse.”
Judge Lord Pentland said: “In the early hours of June 8, 2017, you killed your baby daughter Mikayla. “I use the term ‘killed’ advisably, as the Crown has accepted your late plea of guilty to culpable homicide and not to insist on the original more serious allegation of murder, on the basis you didn’t deliberately intend to kill Mikayla.
“Mikayla was 23 days old. She was in your sole care at the time of her death. You shook her, causing her head to strike the door that she was so severely injured that she later died.
“Anyone knows that to shake a baby is very dangerous. It was clearly a violent and severe assault on a highly vulnerable baby.
“After the attack, you delayed in seeking assistance and for a time attempted to conceal what you had done. “Your immediate reaction was to protect yourself, rather than seek help for Mikayla.” Haining was sentenced to eight years in prison, backdated to September 11, which the judge said would have been nine years but for his guilty plea.
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