The stepfather of a small boy who drowned at a water park has been jailed for more than seven years for offences including manslaughter by gross negligence and threatening to bomb the home of a witness.
Paul Smith, 36, was sentenced on Wednesday, having changed his plea on the manslaughter charge to guilty during his trial at Birmingham crown court.
His stepson, Charlie Dunn, died after being pulled from a 1.4-metre-deep lagoon at Bosworth water park, in Leicestershire, in July last year. The five-year-oldhad gone missing while unsupervised.
Smith was seen smoking after Charlie went missing and was heard saying: “For fuck’s sake, we’re ready to go. I don’t know where he fucking is.” Charlie could not swim and was on the child protection register.
Mrs Justice Jefford sentenced Smith to five years and two months for the manslaughter charge, with a consecutive two-year term for threatening to petrol-bomb the home of a witness to a separate incident involving Charlie. Smith was also given a four-month sentence for driving while disqualified.
Charlie’s mother, Lynsey Dunn, 28, was given an eight-month suspended jail term after admitting neglecting the child in a separate incident in 2015, when a neighbour prevented the then four-year-old from driving a toy car on to a main road.
Smith, from Tamworth in Staffordshire, initially denied any wrongdoing in relation to Charlie’s death, but pleaded guilty earlier this month to unlawful killing on the grounds of gross negligence.
The jury was told other children pulled Charlie from the lagoon. He had been allowed to “fend for himself” in a pool which had signs warning parents that children must be supervised, the court heard.
Passing sentence on Wednesday, the judge said: “I do not doubt that Lynsey Dunn and Paul Smith had genuine love and affection for Charlie.”
Rejecting Smith’s assertions that he had been an “impeccable” stepfather, the judge told him: “Nothing could be further from the truth. One father [at the water park] had to explain to another that Charlie was not his son.
“You were completely indifferent to Charlie’s whereabouts and safety. This was not a case in which there was an isolated and momentary lapse in care and supervision.”
The judge said of the children – aged 10, 11 and 12 – who found Charlie and pulled him from the water: “This must have been a horrific experience for them and I take this opportunity to praise the care that these young boys showed for Charlie.”
She said Smith appeared to have “simply given no thought” to Charlie’s safety.
Before sentencing it emerged that Charlie had been made the subject of a social services child protection plan in November 2012.
