Pictured, toddler ‘shaken to death by her gay father’
The toddler, pictured yesterday for the first time, died in hospital in May 2016 – just two weeks after she had been formally adopted by the fitness instructor and his husband Craig, 36.
A doctor told a jury yesterday she had bleeding on the brain consistent with a ‘shaking type injury’ at the time of her death.
Elsie had been rushed to hospital by ambulance in an unresponsive state and a CT scan showed she had bleeding on the brain.
Cardiff Crown Court heard a 999 call was made by Matthew ScullyHicks on May 25 saying he had found her unresponsive on the living room floor.
A CT scan was ordered and Dr Nia John was called from home to see the parents following the results, the court heard.
Dr John, consultant community paediatrician responsible for child protection, recalled explaining to them that such bleeding on the brain could be an indicator of a non-accidental injury.
She said: ‘I remember explaining the usual pattern is a shak-
‘Strange and out of the ordinary’
ing type injury.’ A post-mortem examination revealed Elsie had suffered several broken ribs, a fractured left femur and a fractured skull.
Tests also found evidence of both recent and older bleeding in her brain, and haemorrhages in front of her eyes.
Yesterday, Dr David Tuthill, a consultant paediatrician who attended to Elsie in hospital, said Matthew Scully- Hicks acted ‘very strangely’ as she lay dying.
He reported him to police because of his ‘very calm’ explanation about what happened to her at the couple’s home in Llandaff, Cardiff.
Dr Tuthill said: ‘He told me he had gone out into another room and came in and found her not breathing. He started trying to resuscitate her. There was no history other than that.’
He added: ‘My recollection of [Matthew Scully-Hicks] was of him being very calm.
‘Most resuscitations, people are in tears. Parents are normally in floods of tears and it’s my job to comfort them. A child has just died. It struck me as very unusual.’
Dr Tuthill said he had not recorded his demeanour in the medical notes.
‘It was very strange and out of the ordinary,’ he told the jury.
Dr Tuthill said he had told his nurse practitioner: ‘ That’s strange – he was very calm.’
But Robert O’Sullivan QC, representing Matthew ScullyHicks, told the doctor: ‘[He] was anything but calm in the emergency department as he was watching his daughter’s resuscitation.’
Dr Tuthill replied: ‘ That wasn’t my observation.’
A review of an X-ray taken of the ankle fracture Elsie had suffered months before her death also showed doctors had missed a separate break in the thigh bone of the same leg.
Dr John said the previously overlooked fracture was not ‘consistent’ with a normal toddler injury.
She said she told Elsie’s parents about the injury and they replied that she was ‘a generally clumsy girl’.
Elsie died at the University Hospital of Wales on May 29, when her ventilator was switched off as she would not survive her head injuries.
Matthew Scully-Hicks, now of Delabole, Cornwall, denies murder. The trial continues.