A woman who murdered her 21-month-old daughter after stamping on her chest in a savage outburst has been jailed for life.
Sentencing Kathryn Smith to a minimum of 24 years, the judge told her she was a “devious, manipulative, selfish young woman” who had “brutally snuffed out” Ayeeshia Jane Smith’s life.
The toddler was killed in May 2014 at her flat in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, in what Justice Andrews described as “a vicious beating in her own bedroom, surrounded by her toys and playthings”.
Speaking outside Birmingham crown court, Ayeeshia’s father Ricky Booth, 21, said he felt “let down” by social services, saying the jail term would never replace his daughter’s life.
Throughout the six-week trial Smith, who had “an explosive temper”, denied anything to do with the death and claimed that Ayeeshia had died after a seizure.
Jurors heard how the toddler had died of a fatal heart laceration, a type of injury usually only found in crash victims. She had previously suffered a bleed on the brain from an assault at her mother’s hands in February 2014, with forensic tests showing a pattern of recent injuries including a huge bruise on her spine.
Ayeeshia, who was taken into care for a period in mid-2013, also had several broken ribs and other marks and abrasions on her body.
Smith was a regular cannabis user who kept the drug in her daughter’s plastic beaker and admitted to a health visitor that she was “a crap mother”.
“Ayeeshia was a particularly vulnerable victim, thin and slight of frame, deserving of protection and under the protection of social services for the whole of her short life. She was killed in her own home by her own mother – that is the grossest breach of trust,” said Andrews.
Burton MP Andrew Griffiths has called for a public inquiry into Ayeeshia’s death, as he compared the case to that of Victoria Climbie and Baby P.
Andrews said the abuse and neglect took place under the noses of child protection agencies, including Derbyshire county council social services, after they found Smith living in a garage, while pregnant with Ayeeshia. A serious case review is currently being carried out by the Derbyshire safeguarding children’s board.
Booth said he had “made calls to social services several weeks before AJ died warning them that she was at serious risk.” The judge criticised Smith for “maintaining a wall of silence” over what triggered the attack, robbing Booth and other loved ones of vital answers regarding Ayeeshia’s last moments.
Andrews told Smith, who wept throughout proceedings, that the picture she tried to paint in court “of the downtrodden subservient mother is far from the truth”.
Andrews accepted that Smith’s former partner, Matthew Rigby, had become a “doting” substitute for Ayeeshia’s natural father but noted he had failed to intervene to stop Smith’s violent outbursts.
He was found guilty on Friday of allowing the death of the toddler but cleared of murder and child cruelty in what the lead police investigator described as a “harrowing, horrible and heartbreaking” case. Rigby was jailed for three years and six months.
DI Andy Maxfield, of Staffordshire police, described Smyth as “a vile, manipulative individual” and said “a minimum term of 24 years is appropriate”.
