News, South East
Kent PoliceA father has been found guilty of murdering his baby daughter after he told a court he could not remember what happened the night she suffered severe injuries.
Thomas Holford admitted the manslaughter of Everleigh Stroud, after the five-week-old baby suffered “violent shaking” when she spent the night alone with him in the bedroom he shared with her teenage mother in Ramsgate.
The court previously heard how Holford, of Ramsgate, claimed he had no memory of the incident, and he had smoked multiple cannabis joints on the evening he attacked his daughter.
The jury at Canterbury Crown Court found him guilty of murder and causing actual bodily harm on Thursday.
Everleigh died when her life support machine was turned off a year after the attack in April 2021 which left her with severe injuries to her brain, ribs and legs.
‘Really serious harm’
During the trial, defence barrister Jo Martin KC told Canterbury Crown Court that Holford showed no planning, premeditation or motive before killing his daughter.
She said: “This cack-handed, cannabis-fuelled young man would try everything he would normally do to work out why she was crying and then he would move on to stopping that crying.”
But prosecution barrister Eloise Marshall KC told the court that Holford “would have known he would have caused that child really serious harm” by shaking her with “extreme force”.
“He is causing her ribs to break. Even that act on its own is enough to show that he intended really serious harm.”
