RAF man tried to blame wife after he killed baby daughter

Iraq veteran Gareth Harries, 25, had been due to stand trial on a charge of murdering eight-month-old Chloe in November 2006 in the family's home at the RAF base at Lossiemouth, Moray.

In a special defence, he had incriminated the infant's mother, Hayley, 21.

However, Harries changed his plea and admitted he had shaken Chloe when she would not stop crying, and had caused fatal brain damage.

"He is ashamed of his behaviour … he could not face accepting responsibility, which he now does unequivocally," said defence counsel Ian Duguid QC.

Mrs Harries, who also serves in the RAF, was in court, but declined to comment as she left. It was said that the couple's marriage was finished.

Harries, a senior aircraft technician, will be sentenced next month. The Crown accepted his guilty plea to the lesser offence of culpable homicide.

The advocate-depute, Simon Bowie, told the High Court in Edinburgh that Harries, from Milford Haven, South Wales, and his wife had been stationed in Hampshire.

But, following "some domestic difficulties", they moved to Lossiemouth in 2006, staying in a service house. They had "a somewhat turbulent relationship".

Harries appeared to have difficulty creating a close bond with his daughter. He seemed keen to do so, but the child was very strongly attached to her mother, the court heard.

On 24 November, Harries collected Chloe from her child-minder, while Mrs Harries went out for a drink with colleagues straight from work. She returned home to change clothes, and he was "extremely angry" when she went out again.

About 10:25pm, Harries called an ambulance, reporting that his daughter was not breathing. He knocked on the door of a neighbour, Beverley Kellet, a midwife.

She found him sitting on her doorstep holding Chloe. He handed over the child, saying he did not know what to do. Ms Kellet could find no pulse, and tried to revive Chloe until the ambulance arrived.

Mrs Harries was contacted, and she made her way to hospital in Elgin. Chloe was put on a ventilator and transferred to Edinburgh's Royal Hospital for Sick Children, but she could not be saved. Doctors suspected she had been shaken.

Harries was interviewed by police and claimed Chloe had been crying, and began to scream. It lasted 15 minutes, then stopped suddenly. She was limp and unresponsive, and in picking her up he had bumped her head on the side of the cot, he stated.

"I didn't do anything … I did not murder my daughter," Harries had insisted.

Mr Bowie said Harries had now accepted by his guilty plea that he had shaken Chloe that night.

He said: "He could have shaken the child forcefully one or more times, and unknowingly have caused catastrophic damage to the breathing centres of the brain stem. The child would stop breathing momentarily, but might well then begin breathing again. Over time, however, the injury would cause bleeding and swelling of the brain. Eventually, the breathing function cannot be maintained and the child dies."

He added that Mrs Harries had been devastated by the death of her daughter.

Mr Duguid said Harries had also been devastated by the consequences of his actions. He had an exemplary service record.

His marriage was now at an end, and his career was also almost certainly over, added Mr Duguid.

The judge, Lady Dorrian, remanded Harries in custody to await sentencing.

FACTBOX

VIOLENTLY shaking a baby can have devastating consequences, sometimes leading to death or serious disability.

Shaking a baby severely results in the deaths of about a third of victims and permanently disables another third.

Those babies who survive being shaken can suffer learning disabilities, seizures, behavioural problems and cerebral palsy.

When a baby dies after being shaken, the most common causes are subdural bleeding – beneath the top layer of the brain – bleeding behind the eyes and axonal injury, shearing or severing the brain's nerve fibres.

There has been controversy over the use of the term "shaken-baby syndrome" to describe the injuries suffered by some infants. Some studies have suggested they could, instead, be the result of a lack of oxygen resulting from a much less severe trauma, or possibly no trauma at all.