A four-month-old baby barely survived an assault in 2020. His father was convicted by a judge on Friday of attempted manslaughter. He treated his son so roughly that the child suffered a brain contusion and retinal hemorrhage in both eyes. The father was given 240 hours of community service.
During the hearing of the case, the 31-year-old man from Breda and his lawyer found that there was not enough evidence that he had shaken the baby. The child would have been injured in a different way and so the lawyer asked for acquittal. The prosecutor disagreed. “It is likely that the brain injury was caused by blunt force and/or that the child was shaken vigorously for at least five seconds.”
‘Tired and frustrated’
In August 2020, the resident of Breda will be waiting with his son for the corona press conference to start. The man’s girlfriend is not at home. At that moment the baby starts to cry and scream loudly, as the baby had often done in the days before. “I was very tired and frustrated with sleep deprivation,” the suspect explained in court earlier. “I then put him in his bed hard and too quickly. He bounced with his head against the bars.”
When the suspect drops a pan downstairs and the baby doesn’t respond, he knows something is wrong. The partner is therefore at home and they quickly call 112. In the hospital it turns out that things are wrong. The child looks gray and his heart is beating slowly.
Brain contusion and retinal hemorrhages
Multiple bleedings are recorded by an expert. The child appears to have a brain contusion, retinal hemorrhages in both eyes and a bruise between the soft and hard meninges. According to the expert, the bleeding can be caused by violent violence, comparable to a traffic accident or a fall of about one and a half meters.
So, according to the Public Prosecution Service, there is enough evidence for an attempted manslaughter. The court decided to go along with the prosecutor’s sentence. In addition to the 240 hours of community service minus pre-trial detention, the man was also sentenced to one year’s probation, with two years’ probation.