December 2011

Ian Hutchinson jailed for son Kieron’s murder

A Barnsley man has been jailed for a minimum of 12 years for the murder of his seven-week-old son.

Ian Hutchinson, 25, was found guilty of his son Kieron’s murder on Friday after a trial at Sheffield Crown Court.

He was alone with his son when he killed the boy at a house in Chapeltown, Sheffield, in September 2010.

The baby suffered catastrophic brain damage after being left in Hutchinson’s care for a short time.

Kieron suffered a fractured skull and and other injuries which the court was told were associated with shaking. He died in hospital four days later.

‘Substantial violence’

The jury heard Hutchinson, who was handed a mandatory life sentence, may have killed his son out of frustration when he was unable to change his nappy.

Hutchinson told doctors and police that he had started changing his son’s nappy after his wife and mother had left the house to go shopping, but found no baby wipes and so called his wife.

He told police that his son had then become upset, coughed, went quiet and then stopped breathing.

Prosecutor Bryan Cox QC told the trial: “What precisely caused the defendant to inflict such serious injury to Kieron is not entirely clear.

“There must have been substantial violence.

“It may have been something as trivial as a sense of frustration that he’d been alone with Kieron without the wherewithal to change his nappy.”

After the verdict, South Yorkshire Police described the case as “tragic” and said the investigation had been “sensitive and difficult”.