Killer dad’s thumbs up
Chilling sign to girlfriend as she gets on bus with body of baby they tortured to death in bid to cover up their crime
THIS is the chilling moment a father gives a thumbs up to his girlfriend as she boards a bus with the body of the baby daughter they tortured to death.
After hatching a plot to avoid jail, parents Rosalin Baker and Jeffrey Wiltshire pretended 16- week- old Imani had fallen ill during a morning bus ride through London.
But in reality the two drug addicts had inflicted a litany of injuries including a fractured skull, a broken wrist and at least 40 rib fractures, before she died on September 28 last year.
After finding Imani dead at the end of their bed when they woke that morning, the pair planned to claim she had suddenly stopped breathing on a bus.
Yesterday both Baker and Wiltshire were facing jail after being convicted of causing or allowing the death of their child.
The pair were cleared of murder at the Old Bailey after a trial in which they blamed each other for the devious plot.
The 25-year- old mother was seen on CCTV as she got on to a bus with Imani’s body strapped to her chest. A cloth covering the dead infant’s face hid the injuries.
Her 52-year-old partner – who boasts he has fathered 25 children – escorted her to the bus stop, where he gave her the thumbs up gesture and a kiss on the lips.
For 20 minutes on the bus, Baker sat texting and making phone calls before beckoning a fellow passenger for help. As the distraught passenger desperately tried to resuscitate the child, who was cold to the touch when she picked her up, the mother chatted on the phone.
An ambulance was called and the bus was stopped in Stratford, east London. As other passengers wept, Baker did not bother to get up.
Paramedic Anthony Steadman said: ‘ The mother displayed no emotion … no questions asked. I had never seen that reaction from a parent before. She seemed cold.’
PC Georgia Ross said Baker was texting during doctors’ 40-minute battle to save Imani, adding: ‘She didn’t once ask how the baby was.’
Imani was taken to Newham Hospital, east London, and was pronounced dead. Rigor mortis had set in. A post-mortem examination revealed she had suffered brain damage and was likely to have been dead long before the bus ride. The parents were arrested that day.
Baker blamed her abusive boyfriend and claimed he tried to frame her by forcing her on to the bus, saying: ‘It’s all your fault, I told you to give her up for adoption.’
The mother said Wiltshire undressed the dead baby, changed her nappy and put her in new clothes before they left home.
Baker claimed his assaults had caused Imani’s premature birth, but insisted she had not noticed her daughter’s injuries before.
Wiltshire, a former rapper hooked on cocaine and heroin, told the court: ‘I’m not a life taker, I’m a baby maker.’ He denied ever having been violent towards any of his 25 children or the 18 women who gave birth to them, and said he had no idea how Imani was killed.
In the week she died, Imani was attacked three times, including having her arms pulled or twisted and being thrown against a hard surface. Duncan Atkinson QC, prosecuting, said the infant was in ‘very significant pain and distress’ and this would have been obvious to the parents, who lived in a bedsit in Manor Park, east London.
Imani was made subject to a child protection plan on August 15 last year. A social worker saw Imani nine days before she died but there was no indication of any injuries.
Yesterday Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC, Recorder of London, said: ‘Imani’s life must have been painful, distressing, and bewildering.
‘The failure to protect her is a very serious matter indeed which could only result in a substantial sentence of imprisonment.’
He remanded the couple in custody until sentencing on May 18.
Detective Chief Inspector Gary Holmes said he had never seen this ‘ level of violence and cruelty inflicted on such a young child’.
‘Thrown against a hard surface’