A man who murdered his ex-girlfriend’s two-year-old son in south London has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years after the couple’s horrific abuse was captured on secret recordings.
Kyrell Matthews was left with 41 rib fractures and internal injuries by the time of his death in October 2019 after weeks of cruelty at the hands of Kemar Brown and Phylesia Shirley, the Old Bailey in London heard.
Brown, 28, was convicted of murder after a trial earlier this month, while Shirley, 24, who had previously worked in children’s services at Croydon council, was acquitted of murder but found guilty of the alternative charge of manslaughter.
Jurors had not been told that Kyrell suffered a significant injury to the side of his face in May 2019, five months before his death, and spent five days in Croydon University hospital.
The hospital carried out an investigation and found Shirley’s explanation that the little boy had fallen off a sofa and hit his head on a highchair was “plausible”.
In addition, jurors were not told police were called to a domestic incident three months before Kyrell’s death but no offences were identified and the boy was said to have appeared “safe and well”.
A passerby had alerted officers on 17 July 2019 after hearing shouting and screaming coming from their flat, with a female voice saying: “Stop hitting my face.”
The couple appeared alongside each other in the dock on Friday as Brown was sentenced to at least 25 years in prison while Shirley was jailed for 13 years.
The toddler, who was non-verbal, could be heard crying and screaming on distressing audio files taken from Shirley’s phone and played to jurors during the trial.
Multiple recordings taken over the final weeks of his life picked up the sound of Kyrell being hit repeatedly, with Brown, who has a number of violence-related convictions, saying: “Shut up” and: “You have to ruin the fun.”
Another recording caught Shirley striking her son and causing him to break down in distress.
The capturing of the abuse on mobile phone recordings has echoes of similar cases in recent months. Sixteen-month-old Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, six, were killed as a result of physical abuse and, like Kyrell, both children had been referred to social services.
Prosecutor Edward Brown QC told jurors that the mother had put her relationship with Brown above her own child.
The couple, who were unemployed at the time of Kyrell’s murder, are understood to have been visited by social services at least once.
“[Shirley] was prepared to reject what should have been motherly care in protecting Kyrell in favour of abuse by her – his own mother – and in favour of the abuse carried out by a man she knew was abusing her child,” the prosecutor told jurors.
“The truth is that his death came when once more he was abused in that flat, once more in a very similar way, causing very similar injuries, except on this occasion it was so much more serious, the abuse and the results were catastrophic.”
In a 111 call made after Kyrell collapsed at home on 20 October 2019, Shirley sobbed as she was told by a clinical adviser to use both hands and “push down fast” and “go for it”.
Both defendants, from separate addresses in Thornton Heath, declined to give evidence during trial, but the court heard Brown‘s defence was that the injuries inflicted were the result of incorrect advice from the operator on how to resuscitate Kyrell.
Paying tribute to Kyrell outside court after the couple were convicted, his paternal step-grandmother, Christine Ernest, said he was “the most loving little boy, always smiling”.
