Call the cops and I’ll drown your baby girl
Abductor’s threat to terrified mum
A THUG broke into a home, snatched a baby girl from her cot and threatened to drown her.
Lewis Jeffers, 24, went into a bedroom where a mother and her three children were trying to sleep and picked up the 10-month-old girl.
He looked the mum straight in the face and warned he would drown the baby if she called police.
He left clutching the baby as police were being scrambled to the area in the 2am drama.
They cornered Jeffers but he dropped the baby on to a concrete floor as he tried to flee. When an officer picked her up she was cold and shaking. Jeffers was arrested but refused to reveal why he had abducted the baby. Jailing him for four years at Derby Crown Court on Friday, Judge Robert Egbuna said: “This was a mother’s worst nightmare. “You uttered a very chilling thing to her, saying you would drown her poor child and if she called police she would not see her again. That is just horrific. “She says she was in a blind panic, she was hysterical, her heart probably dropped down because she was so scared.
“You then behaved in a spineless way by dropping the baby to the concrete floor so you could try and make your escape.”
Amy Earnshaw, prosecuting, said Jeffers, of Ripley, Derbyshire, broke in through a window at the home in Sinfin, Derby, on August 6.
The mother heard him downstairs and called police.
He admitted child abduction and harassment.
Justin Ablott, defending, said Jeffers was being assessed for mental health issues but no condition had been diagnosed yet.
He said: “He is a father and he finds it impossible to rationalise why he behaved in the way that he did.”