A man who murdered his baby son has been jailed for at least 22 years.
Michael Davis’s son, Ollie Davis, was found unresponsive at home in Beaumont Leys, Leicester, in 2017 – the four-week-old 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.
The pair, of Carlisle Street, Leicester, were convicted in March after a trial at Leicester Crown Court.
Jurors were told Ollie suffered 23 broken ribs, fractures to his skull, collar bone, both arms and the joints of all his limbs prior to his death.
The court had heard he died from the delayed effects of a broken neck.
At Loughborough Magistrates’ Court – which was acting as a crown court – Mr Justice Cotter gave Davis, 29, 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, 31, 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.
Speaking after the sentencing, Ollie’s grandfather Ricky Driver said the pair’s arrest “shook the family to the core”.
“Ollie was perfect in every way when he was born,” he said.
“He had been beaten badly over time and was left to die with his injuries.
“This was our worst nightmare. How could anybody hurt a beautiful baby was beyond words.
“We felt sick to our stomachs, and we have shed many a tear thinking what Ollie went through in his final days.
“This has changed our family forever and we suffer mentally from these evil actions.
“No sentence imposed will ever reflect the heartache and pain inflicted upon my family.”
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 jury heard the baby had died from the delayed effects of a broken neck and a post-mortem examination found he had a total of 40 bone fractures.
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.
Speaking after the sentencing, Det Insp Mark Parish said: “Ollie was a newborn baby who relied on his parents for everything he needed and it was their duty to love and protect him.
“Instead, he was let down in the most horrendous way imaginable.
“Due to the amount of the injuries Ollie suffered and medical expertise needed to examine those injuries, [it] has taken more than six years for this investigation to come to court and for Ollie’s parents to be held accountable for his death.
“During this extremely difficult time, Ollie’s wider family have had to deal with so many emotions but throughout they have remained not only co-operative of the investigation but extremely supportive and I want to thank them for this.
“I hope today’s sentencing will now allow them to start to come to terms with what has been a truly unbearable time.”
Following the trial, a report compiled by the Leicester Safeguarding Children Partnership Board in 2017 said the abuse 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.
