A £90,000-a-year City worker used her phone to search for ‘shaken baby syndrome’ just days before murdering her four-week-old baby, a court has heard today.
Clare Sanders, 43, and her Lithuanian lover Tomas Vaitkevicius, 45, allegedly shook tiny Eva on three separate occasions at their south London flat in August 2017.
Sanders’ mobile phone had been used to search ‘Shaken baby syndrome NHS’, ‘Shaking babies’ and ‘baby is shaking’ on August 27 – six days before Eva’s death, the Old Bailey heard.
Tom Little, QC, prosecuting, read out a text message sent from Sanders’ mobile phone, on August 26, which read: ‘Tom (Vaitkevicius) and I just had a massive barnie’.
‘The following day there are these searches. This was just under a week before Eva was found unconscious and the emergency services were called.’
Clare Sanders, 43, and her Lithuanian lover Tomas Vaitkevicius, 45, allegedly shook tiny Eva on three separate occasions at their south London flat in August 2017. Both deny murder and an alternative count of causing or allowing the death of a vulnerable child
Paramedics were sent to the couple’s house in Mitcham at 2.40am on September 1 after an emergency call was made by neighbour Karen Brewell who lived in the same block of flats as the couple.
Financial consultant Sanders was banging on her door screaming: ‘My baby, my baby,’ while little Eva was on her back in just a nappy.
Eva was rushed to a hospital in south London as paramedics tried to treat her.
She was pronounced dead shortly before 7am on September 2, 2017 and a post-mortem later gave the cause of death as ‘traumatic brain and spinal cord injury.’
Jurors were told Sanders and Vaitkevicius had been drinking on the night Eva was said to have been attacked.
Mr Little said while Eva was being cared for at St George’s Hospital, Tooting, the financial consultant was approached by a police officer and said: ‘You’re looking to prosecute me, and I am losing my child, we just having a drink to celebrate’.
‘Nobody had suggested prosecuting her – and why would she say that she was to be prosecuted unless she knew far more than she way saying,’ the QC said.
‘The prosecution say Eva was violently shaken on at least three separate occasions, when only a month old, in the early weeks of her young life.
‘These violent events were not close in time to each other, one after the other after the other, we say they were days apart.
‘There are no viable alternative perpetrators for the injuries sustained by Eva. We say there are no viable alternative explanations.
‘We say this was a brutal series of assaults in which she was shaken.
‘A defenceless baby not able to talk and say what had happened to her and not able to defend herself.
‘One or both of these defendants must have repeatedly assaulted Eva in August 2017 and then again on the fatal night of August 31, 2017 into September 1, 2017.
‘Nobody else was in their flat on the night, except for these two and Eva.’
Messages exchanged between the pair allegedly show the relationship was tense.
‘They reveal that the relationship was up and down, and they showed that she was struggling to cope with the relationship and a number of other issues at the time’, Mr Little added.
‘One of the issues was a neighbour dispute at the time.’
Sanders was living with her Ukrainian lover in a flat on this road in Mitcham, South London
One WhatsApp message sent by Sanders to her partner on July 2, 2017 read: ‘You have walked out again without saying anything.
‘You say you will be there for the birth but once again your phone is off. You are hurting me so much. I don’t want to live anymore.’
Jurors were told the couple had been together for a couple of years.
Eva was born on 2 August 2017 and was Sanders’ first child.
Sanders and Vaitkevicius, from Mitcham, both deny murder and an alternative count of causing or allowing the death of a vulnerable child.
The trial continues.