Life for dad of four who tried to kill his children with a hammer
A CRAZED father who tried to murder his children by bludgeoning them with a hammer and driving into a pub wall at 92mph was jailed for life yesterday.
Owen Scott, 29, caused lifechanging injuries to the four youngsters and left his sevenyear-old daughter Lucy partially paralysed.
The court heard the scaffolder had developed a chronic paranoia brought on by his cocaine and cannabis use.
Simon Keeley QC, prosecuting, said Scott became convinced he was being chased by a gang who wanted to harm him and his children.
Following a row with his new girlfriend, Scott picked the children up from their mother in Southampton last August and vanished for two days.
He drove to the Isle of Wight, Liverpool, Huddersfield and finally Barnsley.
Then, during a psychotic explosion of anger, he attacked the children with a lump hammer. Lucy, who is wheelchair-bound for life and still in hospital after 13 operations, was struck five times.
Scott’s 21-month-old son Leo and nine-month-old Toby both need to wear protective helmets at all times because of the damage to their skulls. Stepdaughter Alicia, eight, was struck four times with the hammer and her head injuries mean she can no longer play with friends in playgrounds.
Scott then drove his Dacia Logan into the Travellers Inn pub near Barnsley. As police arrived at the scene he clambered over his critically-injured children to escape from the wrecked car unscathed.
A shocked police officer found the two girls on top of each other on the central console of the car while Leo was slumped in a footwell and his little brother was in a carrycot in the adjacent footwell. The judge spent 10 harrowing minutes listing the “life-threatening and life-changing” injuries suffered by each child, including multiple blows to the head consistent with a hammer found in the car.
Mother Sheryl Rogers, 25, said she is “haunted” by the children’s screams at hospital.
Scott, of Fawley, Hampshire, claims to have no memory of the incident and showed no emotion as the injuries were read out at Sheffield Crown Court. He admitted four counts of attempted murder and dangerous driving.
Jailing him for a minimum of 14 years, Mrs Justice O’Farrell said: “You will have to live for the rest of your life knowing that you have damaged, in some cases irrecoverably, the health, both physically and psychologically, of your children.”
Detective Chief Inspector David Stopford, of South Yorkshire Police, said later: “This has been, without doubt, one of the most harrowing cases I’ve worked on.”