Grandfather accused of toddler’s murder says boy’s mother was ‘quick-tempered’

A man accused of murdering his two-year-old grandson has told a court the toddler’s mother was “quick-tempered” and would slap him to the back of the head.

Michael Ives, 47, and his wife Kerry, 46, are accused of fatally injuring Ethan Ives-Griffiths when he lived with them at their home in Garden City, Flintshire, north Wales, before his death on August 16 2021.

Giving evidence at Mold Crown Court on Monday, Ives said his daughter Shannon Ives, 28, would hit her son after they both moved into the family home earlier that year.

He said: “She was quick-tempered.”

He said she would slap him to the back of the head, as well as to the legs or backside.

Asked how often that would happen, he said: “Sometimes it would be a couple of times a day, but it just varied.”

‘Laughing’

He said she would the hit the youngster so his head would jolt forward.

He added: “Ethan would just stand there, look at her and just start laughing at her.”

Ives said his daughter would become more angry after that reaction.

He said he told her she should not hit Ethan.

He told the court: “I did pull her up on it.”

Shannon Ives would tell him to mind his own business, he said.

Wolverhampton

David Elias KC, defending Ives, asked if he ever physically told Ethan off by hitting him or slapping him.

He replied: “No.”

Ives told the court his own upbringing, in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, was a “bad one”.

He said he met his wife when he was 18 and she gave birth to Shannon, their eldest child, about a year later.

The couple moved between Wolverhampton and north Wales before settling in Garden City in 2019, the court heard.

The jury was told Ives received a police caution for assaulting his wife in 2009.

He said: “We had an argument and I went to kick the coffee table and I missed and caught her leg.”

He told the court he was “protective” of Shannon when she was a teenager, but said he had never hit any of his children.

The court has heard Ethan died in hospital two days after an ambulance was called to the house, following what the prosecution allege was a “forceful attack”.

He is alleged to have been targeted as an “object of abuse and neglect” during his time at his grandparents’ home.

Michael and Kerry Ives, of Kingsley Road, Garden City, deny murder, an alternative count of causing or allowing the death of a child, and cruelty to a person under 16.

Shannon Ives, of Nant Garmon, Mold, denies causing or allowing the death of a child and cruelty to a person under 16.