Father accused of toddler’s stabbing

ARUNCORN father has faced trial this week accused of stabbing his own son in the neck in a jealous rage due to a paternity row.

At Chester Crown Court, pictured, on Monday, Oliver King, prosecuting, told jurors how the boy’s mother had been awoken by the sound of the child crying at around 4am on March 20 last year.

She checked on him and found he had suffered a ‘gaping’ 3cm bleeding wound that was ‘ deep enough for his carotid artery to be exposed’.

Mr King said the defendant rang 999 and said the young toddler had been ‘stabbed in the neck with a knife’, prompting the operator to ask how he knew that.

When police arrived at the scene, instead of tending to the casualty inside, the father was ‘some distance away’, Mr King said.

The court heard that whatever was used to stab the infant was never found, with the crown saying it was then that it was probably discarded.

After his arrest, the defendant tried to hang himself while in his cell and was overheard by a custody officer to say ‘what have I done?’.

Mr King said the defendant had a history of becoming jealous over the boy’s mother, who was his on-off partner and mother to a second boy with him, and at times had become ‘paranoid’ that he was not the boys’ father despite his paternity being proven by a DNA test.

On the night of the incident, the defendant had been socialising with his on-off partner, her brother, his own brother and another man.

The men had been drinking alcohol and taking cocaine. At one point the defendant began arguing with the woman, and then ‘blew up in her face’, claiming the boys must have been fathered by someone else.

It became so ‘ heated’ that the group called it a night and the defendant’s brother went upstairs to sleep next to the woman in bed.

She was awoken at 4am by the sound of the twoyear-old crying.

Paramedics treated the boy at the scene and he later required emergency surgery.

Mr King said that although no-one saw the toddler being stabbed, he said there was ‘very powerful circumstantial evidence’ to prove the defendant’s involvement.

The defendant, in his mid-30s and who cannot be named to protect the wounded toddler’s identity, denies unlawful wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and one count of unlawful or malicious wounding.

The trial is expected to last three to four days.

Tom Watson appears for the defence.

Recorder Stephen Riordan QC is the presiding judge in the case.

Proceeding.