A SPECIALIST took 20 minutes to explain the catalogue of injuries suffered by a baby taken to Southampton General Hospital.
Consultant paediatric radiologist Joanne Fairhurst stepped out of the witness box at the city’s crown court and used a plastic ruler to point out on Xrays the fractures the youngster had suffered.
Jurors have heard how the five-month-old boy was detained in hospital on April 23, 2008 with a series of broken ribs as well as haemorrhaging in the eyes, which it is claimed, were inflicted by his father, Luke Lock.
Dr Fairhurst said she was certain that 11 ribs at the front of the child’s body were fractured and “on the balance of probabilities” one at the back may have been too.
“What I am seeing are healing fractures, at least three weeks old, perhaps four weeks old, before April 24,” she told the court. “I have no doubt they are healing fractures which is why the ribs are expanded and there has been some repair.”
Dr Fairhurst explained fractures at the back could not be caused from day to day handling of a child while broken ribs on the chest could be caused by a very nasty fall onto a pointed surface, by a blow inflicted by a kick or punch or if the child had been gripped or squeezed.
She said that the most likely explanation for the combination of rib fractures suffered by the boy was that he had been squeezed or gripped.
“It would be obvious to the person inflicting them they would have used abnormal force,” she added.
Dr Elizabeth Evans told the court she had examined the baby at the hospital’s paediatric assessment unit and his mother, Charmain Rippon, told her of an incident eight days earlier when she and Lock were changing his nappy.
“She said a pine box had fallen on to his tummy. He didn’t cry but afterwards he started to cry a lot. She thought it was important information that could have contributed to his illness.”
Lock, 21, of Albert Road South, Southampton, denies two counts of causing grievous bodily harm, inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent, causing actual bodily harm and child cruelty.
His former partner, Rippon, 23, of Wavell Road, Bitterne, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of child cruelty through neglect and exposing the baby to unnecessary suffering.
The court has been told the toddler was released some three weeks after his admission into the care of foster parents.
Proceeding
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