Father who shook baby to death jailed for eight years

● 23-day-old girl was left in a coma ● Guilty plea leads to lesser charge

A man has been jailed for eight years after admitting killing his 23-day-old daughter by shaking her.

Thomas Haining, who was 19 at the time of the crime, had been charged with murdering Mikayla, but prosecutors accepted his guilty plea to the lesser charge of culpable homicide.

The high court in edinburgh heard how he inflicted “catastrophic” brain injuries on his daughter during a “momentary loss of control”, leaving her in a coma with a fractured skull and several broken ribs.

The killer had stayed up on the night of 7 June 2017 to look after baby Mikayla, who had been crying more than usual and suffering from diarrhoea in the few days before her death.

With his ex-girlfriend, Shannon Davies, asleep upstairs in their Inverness home, Haining claimed to have taken Mikayla out of her Moses basket to feed her in the early hours of 8 June, after which he said she became sleepy and unresponsive.

Phone records showed Haining had made four internet searches during this time, trying to find out information about babies being in a coma and querying: “What happens if a newborn baby is shake (sic) hard?”

Paramedics were called and took her to hospital where she was placed in intensive care with a ventilator, having suffered a cardiac arrest as a result of the head trauma.

Later that afternoon, the baby was taken off life support and placed into her mother’s arms where she passed away at 4:46pm.

After two years of denying he had killed his daughter, Crown prosecutors accepted a guilty plea from Haining to the charge of culpable homicide on 5 September.

Shelagh Mccall QC, representing Haining, told the court yesterday he was prepared for a lengthy time in jail and that he now “hated” himself.

She claimed the killer panicked after the event but he now wishes he had come clean about his actions sooner.

The court heard the 21-yearold had a troubled upbringing and a history of violence as a teenager, although he had no previous criminal convictions. Haining was sentenced to eight years in prison, backdated to 11 September, which the judge said would have been nine years if the case had gone to trial.