A “controlling and coercive” father who shook his three-month-old daughter, causing her un-survivable head injuries, has been jailed for 14 years.
Samuel Warnock, 29, of Devizes in Wiltshire, previously pleaded guilty at Winchester Crown Court to the manslaughter of Maya Warnock in 2021.
His wife and Maya’s mother, Jasmine Warnock, 29, was also sentenced to a three-year community order with 30 rehabilitation days after pleading guilty to child cruelty for failing to stop her husband from assaulting their daughter.
Sentencing the pair, the judge, Mrs Justice May, said that the death came against a background of domestic abuse by Warnock against his wife.
She described Warnock as a “reckless and irresponsible new father, prone to anger, easily frustrated, profoundly needy and dangerously incapable of caring properly for a tiny new baby”.
The judge told Mrs Warnock: “You are to some extent a victim of controlling and coercive behaviour and this impacted your ability to recognise what he was doing but it didn’t render you entirely powerless.”
