Father ‘may have killed baby because he couldn’t change his nappy’

A prosecutor told Sheffield Crown Court how Kieron Hutchinson suffered catastrophic brain damage after he was left for a short time with his father Ian Hutchinson.

The baby suffered bleeding eyes and a seven-and-a-half centimetre skull fracture - injuries which must have been caused by an impact with a hard object and violent shaking, the court heard.

Prosecutor Bryan Cox QC said: “What precisely caused the defendant to inflict such serious injury to Kieron is not entirely clear.

“It may have been something as trivial as a sense of frustration that he’d been alone with Kieron without the wherewithal to change his nappy.”

Mr Cox said paramedics were called to the defendant’s mother’s house in Chapeltown, Sheffield, on September 3, last year.

Kieron was taken to Sheffield Children’s Hospital where he died four days later.

The court heard how the youngster had been seen by his GP earlier on September 3 for a routine appointment and nothing of concern was noted.

Later, Hutchinson was left alone with Kieron after his wife, Rebecca Hutchinson, and his mother, Georgina Hutchinson, went to the supermarket.

The defendant told doctors and police he had begun to change his son after the women left the house but found there were no wipes in the changing bag.

He rang his wife to tell her this. Hutchinson told police that his son then became upset, coughed, went quiet and then stopped breathing.

But Mr Cox told the jury of 10 women and two men how numerous medical experts had concluded Kieron’s severe injuries could only have been the result of a violent, non-accidental trauma.

He said: “There must have been substantial violence.

“In the opinion of the doctors, there must have been an impact against a hard object and violent shaking.”

He said a consultant ophthalmic pathologist said the bleeding in the baby’s eyes was at the extreme end of seriousness.

Mr Cox said a staff nurse at the hospital heard the defendant tell his wife: “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

Hutchinson, 24, of Elizabeth Street, Goldthorpe, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, denies murder.

He sat listening to the prosecution opening of the case in the dock flanked by a security officer.

He was wearing a dark suit with a purple shirt and purple tie.

The case continues.