Dad of four-week-old baby who died from ‘snapped’ neck jailed

A man who murdered his baby son has been jailed for a minimum of 22 years.

Michael Davis’s son, Ollie Davis, was found unresponsive at home in Beaumont Leys, Leicester, in 2017 – he had suffered a broken neck in addition to dozens of other injuries.

Ollie’s mother, Kayleigh Driver, was found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child and causing or allowing a child to suffer serious physical injury.

She was jailed for seven years.

Jurors were told Ollie, who was four weeks old, suffered 23 broken ribs, fractures to his skull, collar bone, both arms and the joints of all his limbs prior to his death.

At Loughborough Magistrates’ Court – which was acting as a crown court – Mr Justice Cotter gave Davis a life sentence with a minimum prison term of 22 years on Wednesday.

Sentencing Davis, Justice Cotter said: “I have no doubt that during the night you became frustrated and angry and this led to terrible violence.

“You assaulted him on multiple occasions.

“The attacks in their various forms were also brutal – in particular the fatal neck injury.”

After saying he was sure that Davis had caused all the injuries during four separate overnight “episodes” of violence, Justice Cotter said “at least five different mechanisms” were used to cause the “terrible array of injuries.”

The judge said Driver, who was found not guilty of murder by the jury, “must have heard Ollie’s cries after he was assaulted”.

“You were together in the bedroom. This must have woken you up,” he said.

The pair were convicted after a two-month-trial which heard Ollie was found lifeless in his crib in the bedroom that he shared with his parents at Upper Temple Walk in Leicester, on the morning of 21 October 2017.

The injuries were inflicted over various overlapping timeframes of up to 10 days before his death, the court heard.

Jurors were told the fatal injury had happened between four and eight days before Ollie’s death.

Leicestershire Police said medical experts found the fractures he sustained were non-accidental and must have been caused by serious physical abuse.

Following the trial, a report compiled by Leicester Safeguarding Children Partnership Board in 2017 said the abuse four-week-old Ollie suffered was “not foreseeable” but there were lessons to be learned from the case.

The review found “early opportunities to refer and assess [the family] were not taken”.

It concluded pre-birth work with them was not considered necessary “despite the significant previous involvement which both parents had had with Children’s Social Care”.

Leicester City Council said 16 improvements proposed following the safeguarding review had been implemented since 2017.