Juror wipes away tears as toddler’s injuries described in court

A juror wiped away tears as details of the injuries sustained by a two-year-old boy who was allegedly murdered by his grandparents were detailed to a court.

Ethan Ives-Griffiths died on August 16 2021, two days after he collapsed with a fatal head injury at the home of his grandparents, Michael Ives, 47, and Kerry Ives, 46, in Flintshire, North Wales.

In her closing speech at Mold Crown Court on Thursday, Caroline Rees KC, prosecuting, said the toddler suffered ill treatment and neglect at the hands of the people who he “should have been able to trust to care for him the most” – his grandparents and his mother Shannon Ives, 28.

She pointed out the contrast between a picture of Ethan from April 2021, as a “happy, smiling little boy with chubby cheeks” and footage of him taken from cameras in the back garden of the home in Garden City in the weeks before his death.

‘Broken’

She said: “What you see there in that CCTV is a small and diminished, withdrawn, malnourished, broken little boy whose life by now has become characterised by misery and suffering.”

By the time he was taken to hospital on August 14 he was in a “desperately sad and sorry state”, and was dangerously dehydrated, “just skin and bone” and covered in bruises and other marks, the prosecutor said.

A woman on the jury could be seen wiping away tears after Ms Rees said: “Ethan’s little body was covered in injuries on the outside but also seriously injured inside, including a catastrophic brain injury which led to his death.”

Ms Rees said CCTV footage showed Michael Ives carrying his grandson “as though Ethan was just a bag of rubbish to be slung out”.

Ms Rees said there was “overwhelming expert evidence” that Ethan sustained the fatal injury on the evening of August 14 at the time of, or minutes before, his collapse.

The jury has been told he was in a room with Michael and Kerry Ives at the time of his collapse, while his mother was upstairs on the phone.

Impact

Experts said his injury was caused by impact or shaking with the kind of force that would be “horrifying” for a bystander to watch.

Medical evidence also showed an older brain injury which was likely to have been sustained more than two weeks earlier.

Ethan was also found to have abdominal injuries likely to have been caused by blows in the days before his collapse, which Ms Rees said were consistent with CCTV of Michael Ives appearing to punch the toddler after putting him into a car seat on August 12.

Bruises on his face and leg were consistent with grip marks, the jury heard.

David Elias KC, defending Michael Ives, told the jury they would have little difficulty convicting him on a count of child cruelty as he accepted he had ill-treated and neglected Ethan.

But he said if the jury looked properly and carefully at the evidence, it was not capable of driving them to the sure conclusion that Michael Ives inflicted the fatal injuries.

He said Shannon Ives had “reinvented history” and called for jurors to consider who it was who had been hitting Ethan when he was living with his grandparents.

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 Rhes-y-Cae, near Holywell, denies causing or allowing the death of a child and cruelty to a person under 16.