A teenager who at 16 shook a four-month-old baby to death has been found guilty of murder.
Carl Alesbrook, now 19, was unanimously convicted of murdering Elijah Shemwell, his partner’s son, in January 2022 when he was left alone with the infant.
He was also found guilty of two counts of causing grievous bodily harm, relating to attacks on Elijah that caused bleeding on the brain, whiplash-type injuries and multiple bone fractures.
The trial at Derby crown court heard that Elijah was shaken on three separate occasions, and died at Queen’s medical centre in Nottingham on 5 January 2022 after going into cardiac arrest.
Alesbrook had met the baby’s mother, India Shemwell, who was 21 at the time, seven weeks before the infant’s murder, and the pair began a relationship.
Shemwell admitted to two counts of child cruelty, including for not dialling emergency services more quickly after Elijah became unwell.
The prosecutor, Vanessa Marshall KC, said Alesbrook killed Elijah when he was left alone with the infant at Shemwell’s home in Belper, Derbyshire.
Jurors were told that Shemwell, now 23, had separated from the baby’s father but “remained emotionally and sexually involved” with him.
Alesbrook denied being in love with Shemwell or being jealous that she was still seeing the father of her child. Alesbrook was living with her part-time at the time of the murder, and described himself and Shemwell as “friends who had a sexual relationship”.
But the jury was shown a message Alesbrook sent to Shemwell saying it “hurts” him that she slept with Elijah’s father just four hours after the defendant had helped her at home.
Shemwell was described by Marshall as “a thoroughly inadequate mother” who neglected Elijah and failed to seek prompt medical attention for him on 1 and 2 January.
“While the prosecution heavily criticise Miss Shemwell for this neglect towards Elijah, it is not the prosecution’s case that she caused any of the injuries,” she said.
The court heard that Shemwell sent a video of Elijah when he was unresponsive with a floppy arm to friends on Facebook on 1 January to ask for advice on his condition, and that she also filmed him struggling to breathe, before she dialled 999 on 2 January.
During the call, she told the operator: “I’ve just come back from the shop and my four-month-old isn’t breathing very well, and he’s gone pale and limp.”
In a Snapchat message to Shemwell days before Elijah was taken to hospital, Alesbrook said: “He is being a cunt, he keeps spitting it out. He doesn’t need changing either, I checked 10 minutes ago.”
Alesbrook told the jury he fed Elijah “quite a few times” but that was the extent of his responsibilities towards the child. Alesbrook’s mother had said in evidence that her son lacked the maturity to care for a baby at the age of 16, the court heard.
Alesbrook was living at a care home at the time when he met Shemwell, and was regularly smoking cannabis, which he had done since he was 12.
The jury heard evidence that on the day of the fatal assault, Alesbrook was suffering from a toothache and had sought pain relief for it.
Addressing the defendant, Marshall said: “Despite your efforts to console him, you resorted to the only tactic you discovered could stop that baby crying and that was to shake him.
“The fact is, you need experience and maturity to walk away when you’re beginning to lose your patience with a crying baby, but you have neither the experience nor the maturity to just walk away, do you?”
Alesbrook and Shemwell will be sentenced on a date to be fixed.
