Bus ride with baby killer
Passengers battled to save the newborn baby – but all wasn’t as it seemed...
Paramedics rushed to the scene to find Imani lifeless
Boarding the bus, new mum Rosalin Baker, 25, carried her precious bundle close to her chest.
Imani, 16 weeks old, was snoozing peacefully, strapped into her baby harness.
Just then, Rosalin turned around and waved at her boyfriend, Jeffrey Wiltshire, 52.
The former rapper, known as Pepper Head, gave a thumbs-up as the bus pulled away.
Little Imani, her face covered by a thin cloth, didn’t stir as her mum took a seat on the 25 bus in Stratford, east London on 28 September 2016.
Texting on her phone, Rosalin sat enjoying the peace.
But 20 minutes in, she realised something was wrong. Her baby wasn’t breathing. Within seconds, panic ensued. A distraught passenger tried CPR and someone dialled 999.
Paramedics rushed to the scene to find the baby lifeless, her skin cold and dark shadows blooming under her tiny eyes.
She had a tell-tale swelling on the right side of her head.
Imani was rushed to Newham University Hospital, where medics battled to save her.
Rosalin hovered nearby, making phone calls.
The 40 minutes that followed must have felt like an eternity, but she didn’t ask for updates.
Tragically, the baby was pronounced dead.
Doctors began asking questions. Rosalin insisted Imani had been fine when they’d boarded the bus.
But doctors noted that the swelling on Imani’s head meant fluid had been leaking from her brain or skull.
And her body temperature was far too cold for a baby who’d suddenly become gravely ill. Something didn’t add up. And post-mortem results revealed why.
Poor Imani had suffered multiple, painful injuries in the days before her death.
A fractured skull, wrist and spine, at least 40 breaks to her ribs and damage to her brainstem.
Imani had been on the child protection register, and for good reason. Police made two arrests…
Her parents.
Born prematurely to drug addicts Rosalin Baker and Jeffrey Wiltshire, Imani’s life was troubled from the moment she’d taken her first breath.
She’d spent 65 days in an incubator, battling for her life.
During that time, Rosalin had only visited her daughter 22 times and Jeffrey hadn’t shown up at all.
Rosalin had promised social workers she would stay away from Wiltshire.
But, weeks before Imani’s death, she’d moved into his east London bedsit with their baby.
And Imani had suffered terrible injuries.
Despite Rosalin’s claims that Imani had died suddenly during the bus journey, police suspected her and Jeffrey of staging the whole thing.
At their trial at the Old Bailey in March 2017, they both denied murder and causing or allowing the death of a child.
Jurors heard Rosalin Baker told paramedics Imani ‘had been crying until about 10 minutes before the ambulance was called and then she just went quiet’. But Duncan Atkinson QC said that didn’t tally with the baby’s condition. ‘Her temperature was recorded as 27.4C, far too cold to have been alive that recently,’ he told the court. Jurors also heard that Baker had been oddly detached as fellow passengers tried to save her baby. ‘Members of the public, presented with the nightmare of an infant who was not breathing, did all they could to help,’ Mr Atkinson continued. ‘They were panicking and distressed. In
contrast, Baker was cold and calm.’
Harrowing CCTV footage was played in court.
One film showed Baker calmly topping up her Oyster travel card in a shop, with Imani strapped in the harness.
Baker showed no emotion as she paid the shopkeeper.
The second showed them boarding the bus.
Jeffrey Wiltshire was also seen kissing Baker goodbye, then giving her the thumbs-up.
Chilling.
It was 20 minutes before Baker raised the alarm – and, later, she showed little emotion when her daughter was pronounced dead.
When asked about the bruising on Imani’s head, she’d claimed, ‘Dad came round yesterday and I don’t know what he did.’
Wiltshire, a father of 23 kids by 18 women, claimed Imani’s ‘breathing had been laboured’ when he’d last seen her on 28 September.
He said he and Baker had noticed her swollen eye, but hadn’t taken her to hospital, ‘scared of child protection’.
Wiltshire, who claimed to be ‘proud’ to father babies in his 50s, even said, ‘I’m not a life taker, I’m a baby maker.’
But an expert found Imani’s head injuries suggested ‘severe impact to the top of the head, and separately to the left side of the head’ and that her rib fractures were caused by ‘forceful compression of the chest wall, for example by squeezing with both hands wrapped round the chest’.
Giving evidence, Baker called Wiltshire a violent man.
She claimed he’d tried to frame her for Imani’s death. Said that after he’d realised the baby was dead, he’d changed her nappy and clothes, and strapped her body into the harness, saying, ‘Sorry, sorry…’
Then, Baker claimed, he’d forced her onto the bus.
But Wiltshire disputed this, claiming he’d returned from a night out in the early hours of 28 September to find the baby off her milk.
He said Baker had packed her bags the following morning and left, taking Imani with her.
He explained the thumbs-up as his normal farewell.
The jury deliberated for 14 hours. Then… Clearing the couple of murder, the pair were found guilty of causing or allowing the death of their daughter.
Jailing Baker and Wiltshire for 11 years for the ‘cynical charade’ to cover up abuse that killed her, Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC described Imani’s ‘terrifying, painful and bewildering’ last days.
He said her head injuries were like those from a car crash.
‘You used the dead body of your daughter as part of an attempt to conceal what really happened,’ he said.
After the trial, the passenger who tried to resuscitate Imani told of her devastation.
‘I can no longer take the bus, and whenever I see a small baby, I always think of Imani,’ she said. ‘It breaks my heart.’
Calling Baker a monster, she said, ‘Both Baker and Wiltshire are the worst kind of people.’
The pair later had their sentences reduced by two years at the Court of Appeal.
Many people were heartbroken for Imani, but those who should have cared for her most had failed her miserably.
‘I’m not a life taker, I’m a baby maker’