A Brisbane man who told his girlfriend his five-month-old baby was "p*****g him off" before he killed him, has been jailed for nine years for the boy's manslaughter.
Adrian Ware was found unresponsive in his Cleveland home in March 2017 by paramedics, after his father Kozan Samuel Thomas Ware reported he could not wake his son.
The baby was taken to hospital but died of a head injury.
Warning: This article contains, with the permission of his family, the name and image of an Indigenous person who has died.
More than 12 months later, 35-year-old Ware was charged with the murder of his son, but earlier this year he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
During a sentencing hearing on Thursday, the Supreme Court heard Ware had been looking after Adrian by himself for the first time when the baby was killed after the child's mother left their home "unexpectedly" for several days.
The court heard in the days leading up to the death, Ware had complained to his sister and another girlfriend about the baby teething and incessantly crying, and at one point said he was "going to end up killing this kid soon" because "he was p*****g him off".
It also heard Ware had never provided an explanation for the head injury but had told police his son had rolled off a bed on more than one occasion in the weeks leading up to his death.
However, a post-mortem determined the head injury was "no more than 24 hours" old, the court heard.
Ware's 'distress was obvious' after his son died
Crown prosecutor Caroline Marco told the court Ware's guilty plea meant he had accepted "agreed" facts that he caused his son's death by "shaking and or inflicting blunt force trauma", she said.
"Ware accepts he is responsible," she said.
His lawyer Kim Bryson told the court Ware had struggled both "financially and emotionally" with caring for his son alone, and despite admitting responsibility, his "distress was obvious" after his son died.
"The act which caused Adrian's death was not born out of gratuitous and protracted violence," she said.
Justice Helen Bowskill said the offence was serious and "terribly tragic" but accepted he had acted in "frustration".
"There is just no way for anybody to reconcile the loss of such a young baby by anything other than profound sadness," she said.
Justice Bowskill ordered he serve just 40 per cent of his sentence, and declared he be eligible for parole in April, 2023.
Family unhappy with the verdict
Outside court Adrian's uncle Kargun Fogarty, who was consoling the boy's mother, said his family had suffered a "great injustice" in court today.
"We're very upset."
Mr Fogarty said his sister had suffered "great depression" since her son's death and did not believe the court took her loss into consideration during sentencing.
"She's been living through hell," he said.
Through tears, he described Adrian as a "beautiful little baby" who was "always smiling".
"Time won't heal this wound."
