Father killed baby for crying but child’s mum stands by him
A FATHER killed his three-month-old daughter by throwing her in anger because he could not stop her crying.
Traherne Williams hurled tiny Sophia Williams on to a couch, causing catastrophic brain damage – but the child’s mother is standing by him, a court was told yesterday.
Days before her death, ill Sophia had been taken to hospital, then allowed home into the care of her killer father.
After flinging her on the sofa at a family centre they had been staying at, in Broxburn, West Lothian, 22-year-old Williams lied to a doctor she had fallen.
Sophia never recovered and died in hospital in June 2016.
Williams and the child’s 20year-old mother Shannon Main – the killer’s lover – were both later charged with murder.
Yesterday at the High Court in Glasgow, Williams pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of culpable homicide. Miss Main walked free after prosecutors accepted her not guilty plea.
Williams was remanded in custody pending sentencing next month.
The couple initially stayed with Williams’ mother but ended up at the Strathbrock Family Unit while waiting for their own tenancy.
Sophia was then born on February 20, 2016. On May 30, the pair were at the unit with Sophia when Miss Main tried to feed her, but she was found to be ‘less responsive than usual’.
She contacted St John’s Hospital in Livingston after stating the baby had been ‘unresponsive for around an hour’.
Prosecutor Angela Gray said: ‘When paramedics arrived, it was immediately apparent the child was extremely sick.’
Williams told doctors Sophia had fallen from a couch three or four weeks previously but medics felt he was being defensive.
A consultant believed Sophia’s brain damage was ‘highly suspicious of non-accidental injury’. She was pronounced dead on June 4 and found to have suffered a ‘traumatic head injury’.
Prosecutor Angela Gray said the guilty plea was accepted on the basis Williams ‘became frustrated at his inability’ to stop Sophia crying while alone with her on May 30.
Ian Duguid, defending, told the court Williams found it difficult to understand how a ‘single reaction’ could have ‘such horrendous consequences’.