Father, 25, left his newborn daughter ‘like a rag doll’ after shaking her to death, court hears 

A father left his newborn daughter ‘like a rag doll’ with ‘catastrophic’ brain and spinal cord injuries after shaking her to death, a murder case has learned.

Darin Harvey, 25, is charged with the murder of two-week-old Felicity-May Harvey at their home in Heywood, Greater Manchester, last January.

Felicity May suffered suffered “catastrophic” injuries after being “deliberately shaken up” by her father, a jury heard.

Prosecutors allege Harvey murdered his daughter, who was just 20 days old, moments after his partner and Felicity-May’s mother, Heather Connolly, left the family’s home.

Tim Storrie KC, the accuser, told Bolton Crown Court that Felicity-May was born with a cleft palate that affected her ability to eat and meant she needed an “extra measure of care”.

Jurors learned that Ms. Connolly left the house in Heywood shortly after 2 p.m. on January 8, 2021.

Before going out, she checked on her daughter who was sleeping in a Moses basket and “had no concerns about her well-being,” the court was told.

She also sent Harvey a reminder that Felicity-May needed nourishment, it is alleged.

Mr Storrie said, “Heather Connolly hadn’t been out of the house for more than fifteen minutes. By the end of that quarter, her whole world had changed.’

Prosecutors allege that while Mrs. Connolly was away, Harvey “physically” assaulted their daughter by shaking her to death.

When Mrs. Connolly returned home, she received a call from Harvey expressing her concern about Felicity-May.

She ran upstairs to find Felicity-May “limp, blue and struggling to breathe,” prosecutors say.

Mrs. Connolly called 999 and Felicity-May was taken to the hospital.

Mr Storrie told the jury: ‘She was, you may think, stunned at what had happened. She had feared for some time that the cleft palate had allowed her daughter to inhale some of her food, and that stopped breathing.”

But tests by doctors revealed “a catastrophic constellation of injuries” to the baby’s brain, as well as serious spinal cord injuries, Mr Storrie said.

There was also evidence of “very substantial bleeding in the eyes,” which was typical of “severe, abusive head trauma, such as that which occurs with shaking or shaking with impact,” the court heard.

Prosecutors said the injuries were caused by Felicity-May being “deliberately shaken or physically assaulted in a way that no one would do unless they clearly wanted to harm her.”

Mr. Storrie continues: ‘The consequences of this way of dealing with her would have been immediately apparent to all present.

“It would soon be apparent that Felicity had become seriously unwell. She would have become like a rag doll.’

Mr Harvey, of Birch Road, Wardle, Rochdale, was arrested that evening before being re-arrested three days later following the death of Felicity-May.

When questioned by police, Mr Harvey denied responsibility for his daughter’s injuries, claiming that when he went to feed her she had been “healthy, responsive and happy”.

He claimed that Felicity “sticked out her tongue” before she “got drowsy” and then put her on the bed, Mr Storrie said.

The KC outlined the case of the prosecution: “We say the trauma inflicted on Felicity was the expression of an intent to cause her really serious harm, as there can be no other explanation for a man shaking a young child.

“That is why we have brought before you the case that Darin Harvey is guilty of murder.”

In a police interrogation played before jurors, Ms. Connolly told an officer that shortly before returning home, Mr. Harvey had called her and said ‘something is wrong with the baby’.

She said she ran upstairs to find Mr Harvey rocking their daughter as he said, ‘What’s going on, honey? What is wrong?’ At first, Mrs. Connolly said she thought Felicity-May might be choking.

“I wasn’t sure if he started feeding her and she was choking,” she said. ‘I’ll put her on the bed.

“Darin kept asking me ‘what’s wrong with her?’ I didn’t know, I had just returned.’

She added: “I was running around like a headless chicken. Seconds seemed like minutes and minutes seemed like hours.’

Mrs. Connolly told the officer she could hear her daughter “panting.”

“It was terrible,” she added. “She was having a hard time. She didn’t even cry. She just made those horrible noises.’

While calling 999, Ms. Connolly said that Mr. Harvey was trying to perform CPR on Felicity-May. When she asked him what had happened to their daughter, she told the officer that he “didn’t know.”

“He said he took her out of Moses’ basket to feed her,” she explained. “She looked at him, smiled a little and her eyes rolled back and he said something about her doubling in weight.

“He said he knew something had gone wrong.”

Harvey denies murdering his daughter.

The process continues.