A grandfather may have murdered his six-week-old granddaughter because he disliked the child’s father, a jury has been told.
Amelia Rose Jones was rushed to hospital after Mark Jones rang 999 and said his granddaughter had stopped breathing.
The child, however, who was just 41 days old, was found to have suffered a fracture to the back of her skull, swelling to her brain and broken ribs, Newport crown court heard.
Paul Lewis, prosecuting, said: “These injuries were all of different ages … and they demonstrate she had been subjected to violence on at least three occasions. It was the most recent of these injuries to her had brought upon her cause of death.
“The prosecution case is that in the short tragic life of Amelia the injuries which she came by could not have been accidental. These injuries were all deliberately inflicted upon her by her grandfather.”
The court heard that Jones, 45, from Cwmbran in south Wales, had been largely absent from the life of his 26-year-old daughter Sarah and had only made proper contact with her when she was about 16.
Lewis said Jones disliked Amelia’s father, Ian Skillern, and the jury would have to decide whether that had been the motivation for the violence against his granddaughter.
In the days leading up to Amelia’s death, Sarah Jones said her father had said something odd to her, Lewis told the court. Jones had told his daughter: “Even though I don’t like her dad, I do not hold grudges against a baby.”
The jury heard that Jones had lied at great length in order to try to ingratiate himself with his daughter, even telling her he had cancer when he did not.
“He told her that he needed surgery and turned up at her home on crutches,” Lewis said. “He asked his daughter to help him in and out of the bath and supervise him while he appeared to inject himself with medication.”
The court heard that Sarah Jones began receiving phone calls via a withheld number from a “Dr Hughes” who, unbeknown to her, was her father putting on a different accent.
Lewis said: “Dr Hughes told Sarah that her father indeed had cancer and was gravely ill … and had a limited future. This was a cruel deception … There was not even an ounce of truth in what Mark Jones told his daughter.”
The jury was told that on the evening the child suffered the fatal attack Sarah Jones had gone to the cinema with her sister, leaving her father babysitting at her terraced house in Cwmbran.
When she left, Amelia was breathing normally, the court was told, but by the time she had taken her seat in the cinema, her father rang to say Amelia had stopped breathing. “Sarah asked him why he had rung her and told him to ring 999,” Lewis said.
Jones told the emergency operator: “She just gasped and then stopped breathing.” When paramedics arrived he said he had no idea how Amelia became unwell.
On a previous occasion Amelia was taken to hospital with what was thought to be a chest infection. When X-rays taken at the time were studied after the baby girl’s death it was realised she had suffered broken ribs.
Lewis said the defendant had changed his story several times between his first arrest and being charged by police.
The prosecutor said his defence was now that he accidentally dropped Amelia twice on two consecutive nights, slipping on a child’s toy while carrying her and “blacking out”.
The prosecutor claimed: “It is yet another pack of lies in his attempt to avoid the consequences of what he has done.”
Mark Jones denies murdering Amelia Rose in 2012. The trial, which involves up to 120 witnesses, is due to continue until the end of April.
