A £90,000-a-year City worker accused of murdering her four-week old daughter with her Lithuanian lover told police ‘my god, I’m such a bad mother’ hours before her daughter’s death, a court heard.
Financial consultant Clare Sanders, 43, and Tomas Vaitkevicius, 45, allegedly shook Eva on three separate occasions at their south London flat during the first weeks of her young life.
Sanders’ mobile phone had been used to search ‘shaken baby syndrome NHS’, ‘shaking babies’ and ‘baby is shaking’ on 27 August 2017, six days before Eva’s death.
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
Jurors at the Old Bailey today heard the transcript of Sanders’ police interview, recorded hours before Eva died, in which she admitted finishing a bottle of ‘a liqueur thing’ the previous night.
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 in Mitcham, south London, 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.’
Claire Harden-Frost, prosecuting, read out Sanders’ police interview from the evening of September 1.
Sanders said: ‘It’s all my fault for not keeping an eye on her. Tom (Vaitkevicius) had already had a couple of beers. We had some of that, like, liquor thing.
‘I washed up the glass, so we’d finished it.’
After an interviewing officer asks whether she opened it ‘before the feed’, she replied: ‘No, I don’t think so. Oh my god, are we negligent?’
The officer asked: ‘So, you wrote down that Tom had done the feed but you can’t remember whether you saw him?’
Sanders responded: ‘Oh my god, oh god it’s all my fault.’
Regarding the moment she called the neighbours for help, Sanders said: ‘I went to the neighbours and I called them. I just said he wasn’t breathing. What have I done to my child?’
Jurors at the Old Bailey, above, heard the transcript of Sanders’ police interview, recorded before Eva died, in which she admitted finishing a bottle of ‘a liqueur thing’ the previous night
On her husband’s whereabouts from while she was Eva in the ambulance, Sanders said: ‘At the house. Why was he at the house? Why didn’t he come in the ambulance? Oh my god, was it my fault what happened to her?
‘My god, I’m such a bad mother.’
Sanders also gave her account of discovering her ‘grey and lifeless’ baby.
She said: ‘She was in the pram over by the window. I picked her up and that’s when the milk goes out. I should have, I should have been keeping an eye on her. She was lying on her back. I lifted her to my face.
‘The milk came out. It was a gush. I screamed. Was it milk, was it blood? I don’t know. I thought it was milk. I screamed and passed her to Tom, Tom came in. I just said she’s not breathing.’
On how she knew her baby was not breathing, Sanders said: ‘I don’t know, she was grey and lifeless. Have I just imagined all of that? I was just in a state of panic. I can’t really recall it for you.’
Jurors were previously 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.