INVERNESS FATHER JAILED FOR FATAL SHAKING OF NEWBORN
A father from Inverness who admitted shaking his 23-day-old baby girl to death has been sentenced to eight years in prison.Thomas Haining was 19 when he inflicted "catastrophic and unsurvivable" brain injuries on his daughter, the High Court in Edinburgh heard last month.
His daughter Mikayla died from severe head trauma in June 2017.
Haining, now 21, was originally charged with murder but prosecutors accepted a lesser charge of culpable homicide.
Appearing for sentencing, a judge said no sentence could restore the damage Haining had caused.
On the night of the attack, Haining had stayed up to look after Mikayla, who had been "unsettled" in the few days before her death, crying more than usual and suffering from diarrhoea.
With his ex-girlfriend Shannon Davies asleep upstairs in their Inverness home, Haining claimed to have taken Mikayla out of her Moses basket to feed her in the early hours, after which he said she became sleepy and unresponsive.
Phone records showed that Haining - described by his ex-partner as "being in a panic" - had made four internet searches during this time, trying to find out information about babies being in a coma and querying: "What happens if a newborn baby is shake (sic) hard?" Paramedics were called but were unable to resuscitate the infant.
She was taken to hospital where she was placed in intensive care with a ventilator, having suffered a cardiac arrest as a result of the head trauma.
She was in a coma with a fractured skull and several broken ribs.
Medics concluded Mikayla's head injuries meant "survival was unlikely", and later that afternoon the baby was taken off life support and placed into her mother's arms where she died.
