Nanny ‘shook baby to death in fit of rage’
A TEN-month- old baby boy died after his £3.60-an-hour Hungarian nanny lost her temper and shook him, causing a ‘devastating brain injury,’ a court heard.
Joshua Paul suffered a head injury that caused bleeding in his eyes and brain as well as spinal injuries while in the care of Viktoria Tautz, 34, at his home on August 29, 2014.
The childminder, a student who had been employed through babysitting website childcare.co.uk, told police she had played a ‘horse-riding’ game with baby Joshua but there had been no accidents and she had not shaken him.
Zoe Johnson QC, prosecuting, said Tautz, who had passed a criminal records check and received baby-specific first-aid training, began working for the family on June 16, 2014, after Joshua’s mother, Pearl Vijayan, returned to work. Miss Johnson acknowledged that Tautz had been working in ‘quite testing circumstances’ – confined to a one-bedroom flat for which she was not given a key and instructed not to leave.
However, Miss Johnson said Tautz appeared to love caring for Joshua, who had weighed just 3.7lb when he was born ten weeks premature, and kept a diary of his progress.
In the childminder’s police interview she said they had played ‘horse riding’ or ‘horsey’, ‘which was a game he really enjoyed where he sat on her legs and she held his hands’.
But later that morning Tautz emerged from the flat in Haringey, North London, carrying an unconscious Joshua and plead- ing for help. A neighbour phoned for an ambulance and paramedics found Tautz performing mouth- to- mouth resuscitation on the baby in the hallway. Joshua was initially taken to the nearby North Middlesex Hospital but was later transferred to the specialist Great Ormond Street Hospital. He died in the arms of his parents, Nirmal and Pearl Vijayan on September 1, Blackfriars Crown Court heard.
Miss Johnson told the jury that something had ‘snapped’ in Tautz that morning and she had assaulted Joshua. She said: ‘Her account of what happened does not explain Joshua’s injuries and therefore something occurred – a shaking and/ or impact – which the defendant has not revealed.
’Joshua died because of a head injury that caused bleeding in his brain, bleeding in his eyes and other brain and spinal injuries. You will hear from a number of medical experts, and a group of these have con- cluded that Joshua suffered that head injury as a result of being shaken or shaken with an impact to the head.’
Miss Johnson said: ‘ The defendant told a paramedic that Joshua had been playing that morning and seemed fine. She heard him crying so she went into his room.
‘When she picked him up he shook twice as if he was convulsing and then went floppy and stopped breathing.’
A series of medical tests did not provide an explanation for Joshua’s collapse or the brain and spinal injuries, Miss Johnson told the court. She also said experts had ruled out natural diseases and other conditions as an explanation for Joshua’s collapse and injuries.
Tautz denies manslaughter. The trial continues.