City worker and her lover ‘shook her four-week-old daughter to death so hard her injuries resembled those caused from falling off a multi-storey building’, court hears
- Clare Sanders, 43, and boyfriend Tomas Vaitkevicius, 45, are accused of murder
- Baby Eva died of a traumatic brain and spinal cord injury aged just four weeks
- Expert witness tells trial baby’s eyes showed trauma signs days before she died
Clare Sanders, 43, and her boyfriend Tomas Vaitkevicius, 45, are accused murdering four-week-old daughter Eva, who died of traumatic brain and spinal cord injury. She is pictured above leaving court on an earlier date
A City worker and her lover shook a baby so hard her injuries resembled those caused from falling off a multi-storey building, the Old Bailey heard today.
Clare Sanders, 43, and her boyfriend Tomas Vaitkevicius, 45, are accused murdering four-week-old baby Eva, who died of traumatic brain and spinal cord injury.
Injuries to Eva’s eyes showed signs of severe ‘trauma’ from up to two days before she died, an expert witness told the Old Bailey.
Both defendants deny all charges against them.
Optimologist Dr Jo McPartlind, who examined Eva after her death, appeared via video link to give evidence.
Asked if she found an optic nerve haemorrhage in Eva’s left eye, Dr McPartlind said: ‘Yes I did. I saw it around the optic nerve sheath but it extended a distance of a maximum 4mm.’
She added there was also haemorrhaging in the right, extending ‘to a maximum of 5mm’.
The expert added: ‘I was able to confirm bleeding along the optic nerve, the entire length and circumference of the nerve. Both optic nerves.’ She also found retinal haemorrhaging, but just in the right eye.
Dr McPartlind continued: ‘Some bleeding occurred at least 48 hours before death. But there was later fresh bleeding after that time.
‘The findings indicted trauma.
Vaitkeicius, 45, pictured above, wore a black suit. Sanders and Lithuanian-born Vaitkeicius, of Mitcham, deny murder and the alternative charge of allowing the death of a vulnerable child
‘It can be seen in very severe types of accidents – for example fatal car accidents, falls from multi-storey buildings onto concrete, severe head crash injuries’.
She said signs pointed to an injury involving an acceleration then sudden slowing down of the head.
It could be just one injury if it was ‘very severe’ with a large ‘degree of force’.
The court has heard Sanders’s phone was used to search ‘shaken baby syndrome’ on August 27 2017, six day’s before the victim’s death at St George’s Hospital in London.
City worker Sanders, 43, in a white shirt and scarf, looked impassively ahead in the dock. Vaitkeicius, 45, wore a black suit.
Sanders and Lithuanian-born Vaitkeicius, of Mitcham, deny murder and the alternative charge of allowing the death of a vulnerable child.
The trial continues.
Injuries to Eva’s eyes showed signs of severe ‘trauma’ from up to two days before she died, an expert witness told the Old Bailey, above. Optimologist Dr Jo McPartlind, who examined Eva after her death, appeared via video link to give evidence