Drowned boy’s stepfather jailed for 7 years
THE stepfather of a five-yearold boy who drowned after being left unsupervised at a water park had been known to social services as a ‘risk’ for years, a court heard yesterday.
Paul Smith, 36, was jailed for seven-and-a-half years after admitting the manslaughter of Charlie Dunn through gross negligence.
Mrs Justice Jefford rejected unemployed Smith’s assertions he had been an ‘impeccable’ stepfather, telling him: ‘Nothing could be further from the truth.’
Charlie died at Bosworth Water Park in Leicestershire in 2016 after being left to roam the park for two hours despite being unable to swim. The trial at Birmingham Crown Court heard Smith had been observed blaming others after Charlie went missing. The boy’s body was eventually found by three children in a pool. Smith had been standing trial over the death but changed his plea to guilty midway through the case. At the sentencing hearing yesterday Mary Prior QC, prosecuting, revealed Charlie had been on the radar of social services for more than four years before his death.
Staffordshire County Council had made him the subject of a child protection plan in November 2012, when Charlie was just 14 months old. Social workers had noted ‘poor home conditions, a lack of food and poor hygiene’ at the home he shared with mother Lynsey Dunn, 28, and her then partner.
Although conditions at the house initially improved, they went ‘downhill’ when she began a relationship with Smith in 2014.
Mrs Prior said Smith, who has ten previous convictions for 28 crimes, had been ‘a person of interest’ for the authorities because of another offence – understood to be a spent sex offence dating back a number of years.
She added: ‘Smith had a status of posing a risk to children and there were other friends who were brought to the property who had that same status.’
The death is now being examined by a serious case review.
The judge said Smith, from Tamworth, Staffordshire, had been ‘completely indifferent to Charlie’s whereabouts and safety’ at the water park.
She sentenced him to five years and two months for Charlie’s manslaughter with a consecutive twoyear term for threatening to petrol-bomb the home of a witness and a further four months for driving while disqualified.
Dunn had also been on trial for manslaughter but prosecutors opted not to continue after Smith changed his plea to guilty.
She walked free from court with an eight-month suspended sentence after admitting two separate counts of child neglect.
‘Indifferent to his whereabouts’