A mum and her partner have been found guilty of killing her young son after a horrific campaign of violence which included being held down in freezing cold baths.
Alfie Steele, nine, was repeatedly beaten with weapons as a punishment at his home in February 2021, prior to his tragic death.
Carla Scott and her fiancé Dirk Howell subjected Alfie to the assaults and would often force him into cold baths as part of a cruel and "sinister" means of discipline.
Howell, 41, was found guilty of murder and Scott was convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter. The jury found her not guilty of murdering Alfie at his home in in Droitwich, Worcestershire,
Prosecutor Michelle Heeley KC told Coventry Crown Court both his mother and her partner would hit Alfie with "belts, or a slider, like a heavy-duty flip flop, and use other more sinister forms of punishment", reports the Mirror.
The tragic youngster was found with 50 injuries all over his body, with only a few likely to be due to normal childhood accident.
Alfie was also heard screaming as he begged to be allowed inside his house in a video taken by a neighbour 18 months before he was found dead, the court heard.
Scott, 35, told her trial she had not "belted" her son, while Howell said he did not beat him or attempt to cover-up his awful crimes, instead saying he attempted CPR to revive him.
Footage taken from a police bodycam shows the moment Scott told officers Alfie had "banged his head in the bath".
Jurors were played the 999 call made by Scott on February 18, 2021, in which she claims her son had "fallen asleep" in the bath and drowned.
She tells the operator she could "feel a rattle" on her son’s chest, adding: "He’s not breathing, but he keeps making noises."
She the says: "He fell asleep in the bath. He's got asthma. When he was a baby he got pneumonia."
Scott then gets directions on how to administer CPR, and says: "I can see him breathing a bit. Not a lot but I can see him breathing a bit."
Scott can be seen standing in the doorway of a "dark, dirty and dishevelled" bedroom where Alfie was found.
In another clip, she chillingly calls Howell and says: "He's gone up to hospital, they won't let me go up there yet. There's loads of police, they've got detectives and everything."
She ends the call with: "I will do, I love you too" making a kissing sound down the phone.
The pair are due to be sentenced at Coventry Crown Court next month, with Howell facing life imprisonment.
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