‘My God... I’m such a bad mother’
What £90k city worker accused of shaking baby to death ‘told police’
A WEALThY financial consultant accused of murdering her fourweek old daughter with her lover told police: ‘My God, I’m such a bad mother’, a court heard.
City worker Clare Sanders, 43, and Tomas Vaitkevicius, 45, allegedly shook their baby Eva on three separate occasions during the first weeks of her young life.
Sanders’ mobile phone had been used to search ‘shaken baby syndrome NhS’, ‘shaking babies’ and ‘baby is shaking’ six days before Eva’s death.
Jurors heard the transcript of Sanders’ police interview, recorded hours before Eva died, in which the £90,000-a-year consultant admitted finishing a bottle of ‘a liqueur thing’ the previous night.
Shortly before 2.40am on September 1, 2017, an emergency call was made to the London Ambulance Service by neighbour Karen Brewell, who lived in the same block of flats in Mitcham, south London.
Eva was rushed to a hospital in south London as paramedics tried to treat her. But she was pronounced dead shortly before 7am on September 2, 2017, and a post-mortem examination later gave the cause of death as ‘traumatic brain and spinal cord injury’.
Claire harden-Frost, prosecuting at the Old Bailey yesterday, read out Sanders’ police interview from the previous evening.
Sanders said in it: ‘It’s all my fault for not keeping an eye on her. Tom (Vaitkevicius) had already had a couple of beers. We had some of that, like, liqueur thing. I washed up the glass, so we’d finished it.’
An interviewing officer asked her: ‘had you opened it before the feed?’ Sanders replied: ‘No, I don’t think so. Oh my God, are we negligent?’
The officer asks: ‘So, you wrote down that Tom had done the feed but you can’t remember whether you saw him?’ Sanders responds: ‘Oh my God, oh God it’s all my fault.’
The interview turned to the moment Sanders called the neighbours for help. The mother said: ‘I went to the neighbours and I called them. I just said she wasn’t breathing. What have I done to my child?’
She was asked where Lithuanian Vaitkevicius was while she was Why Sanders in was the he replied: ambulance at the ‘At house? the with house. Why Eva. didn’t he Oh come my God, in the was ambulance? it my fault what happened to her? My God, I’m such a bad mother.’
She also gave her account of discovering her ‘ grey and lifeless’ baby.
She told police: ‘ She was in the pram over by the window. I picked her up and that’s when the milk goes out. I should have, I should have been keeping an eye on her. She was lying on her back. I lifted her to my face.
‘The milk came out. It was a gush. was thought and passed it I blood? screamed. it was her milk. I don’t to Was I Tom, screamed know. it milk, Tom I came in. I just said she’s not breathing.’ her: ‘how did The you officer know she asked was not breathing?’ Sanders replied: ‘I don’t know, she was grey and lifeless. have I just imagined all of that? I was just in a state of panic. I can’t really recall it for you.’ Sanders and Vaitkevicius both deny murder and an alternative count of causing or allowing the death of a vulnerable child. The trial continues.
‘What have I done to my child?