The trial has begun in UK of 43-year-old Portuguese father Pedro Rubim, accused of having shaken his baby son to death while his wife was “out at the dentist’s”.
Described as an administration assistant for finance firm Global Asset Management, Rubim denies manslaughter, sticking to the story he gave police and paramedics that seven-week-old Alejandro had fallen out of a baby bouncer while he (Rubim) was making up a bottle in the kitchen.
But prosecutor Sally O´Neill QC told the court: “It is the Crown’s case, in short, that for whatever reason, Pedro Rubim shook his son with sufficient force to cause those serious and ultimately fatal injuries… and that he did so at the very least with the intention of causing some harm to him”.
The judge, Mr Justice Kerr, told the jury: “There is absolutely no question of murder in this case. Put that out of your minds.
“There is absolutely no suggestion whatsoever the defendant deliberately ended his son’s life”.
But, according to the prosecution, it is equally unthinkable that Alejandro’s “serious head and eye injuries” could have been caused by falling accidentally out of a baby bouncer.
A doctor at Great Ormond Street hospital – where Alejandro eventually died in February two years ago – said he found the baby had “bleeding on the brain and a significant brain injury”.
He informed the parents that the hospital would be investigating for “possible bleeding disorder, and the possibility of the injury being non-accidental”.
An ensuing post-mortem concluded Alejandro’s death was “an example of a fatal head injury of the shaking/ impact type”, writes the Daily Mail.
The trial, at Blackfriars Court, continues.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
