She’s not a mother ... she’s a monster
Good Samaritan’s revulsion as parents given 11 years for killing their baby – and pretending she died on bus
A COUPLE who pretended their baby daughter had died suddenly on a bus to cover up having tortured her to death at home were each jailed for 11 years yesterday.
drug addicts Jeffrey Wiltshire, 52, and Rosalin Baker, 25, concocted a ‘devious’ plan to avoid blame for the killing of 16-week-old Imani.
a Good samaritan who tried to revive the baby said last night they were ‘the worst kind of people’, adding: ‘When I think of Baker I can’t call her a mother, she is a monster.’
Baker blamed her abusive boyfriend for attacking Imani and said he forced her on the bus with the dead child in a sling.
But the former rapper, who went by the name Pepper Head, denied hurting his ‘tiny and beautiful’ daughter or seeing anyone else injuring her.
Wiltshire, who claimed to have fathered 25 children by 18 women, insisted: ‘I’m not a life taker, I’m a baby maker.’
However, CCTV on the number 25 bus in stratford, East london, showed them kissing as Baker boarded last september with the dead baby strapped to her chest. Wiltshire, who did not get on the bus, gave her a thumbs-up as she left.
Minutes later, Baker pretended that her baby had suddenly fallen gravely ill, leaving fellow passengers to give first aid.
However, doctors subsequently found that rigor mortis had already set in and Imani was dead hours before the bus trip.
Following a trial at the Old Bailey last month, the couple were cleared of murder but convicted of causing or allowing the death of their daughter, who was on the child protection register.
sentencing, Judge nicholas Hilliard QC said Imani had been born prematurely and her last days must have been ‘terrifying, painful and bewildering’. He told her parents, who lived on benefits: ‘Both of you at all times put your interests before those of a helpless, dependent baby for whom you were responsible.’ He said they had told so many lies that their credibility was ‘always in doubt’. Imani’s fatal head injuries were like those from a car crash or a fall from a first-floor window, he said. Even though the jury could not be sure who was responsible, he said whoever hurt her meant serious harm. describing the cover-up as a ‘cynical charade’, he added: ‘You used the dead body of your daughter as part of an attempt to conceal what happened.’ In the week before Imani’s death at Wiltshire’s bedsit in newham, east london, where the family shared a bed, she was attacked three times and suffered 40 rib fractures, a broken wrist and terrible head injuries. Bus passenger Fjoralba schmitz, who tried to save Imani not realising she was already dead, labelled Baker a monster, adding: ‘I think about that day all the time. I take medication to sleep. I can no longer take the bus and when I see a baby I always think of Imani. It just breaks my heart.’ PC Georgia Ross said Baker was texting during the 40minute battle to ‘save’ Imani, adding: ‘she didn’t once ask how the baby was.’ Judge Hilliard criticised the couple’s lack of any relationship with their child, saying: ‘You never bonded.’