Telford father starts prison sentence for killing baby son

The 29-year-old told ambulance call handlers he had put his 11-month-old son Oliver Sargent to bed at around 6.30pm and had gone up to check on him half-an-hour later to find him "collapsed" and "floppy" in his cot.

Paramedics arrived at the family home in Priory Way, St Georges, Telford, in minutes but even then it was too late.

The damage had already been done.

The tragic tot was examined thoroughly at both Telford's Princess Royal Hospital and Birmingham Children's Hospital.

The shocking injuries they found set in motion a train of events that would see both Paul and his partner, then Ashlea Sargent but now Thomas, arrested first for causing grievous bodily harm against their baby and then for murder after his death on July 31, 2012.

The list of injuries included a fractured skull, bleeding on the brain and on the eyes, a fractured collarbone, two fractured ribs and a fractured leg.

The kind of injuries, one medical expert suggested during the five-week trial, that would have been inflicted on someone involved in a 40mph car crash.

His parents immediately came under suspicion – and the way they acted while their son was in hospital fighting for his life only served to heighten concerns about the couple.

After the pair had been bailed and were being taken back to Birmingham Children's Hospital by police, Ashlea asked officers if they thought she had "battered" her son.

Paul asked them how long someone would get in prison for causing injuries like the ones their son had sustained.

And a nurse at the city hospital told police she overheard Ashlea talking to her mother Denise Sargent outside where she said: "How long do you think I am going to get?"

The couple were asked to explain the injuries Oliver suffered by both medical staff and police but neither were able to. Paul Thomas claimed he "did not have a clue" and said the whole thing was "a mystery".

Both said the only explanation they could offer was that Oliver had been knocked over by the family dog Rocco, a large and boisterous Dalmatian.

A post mortem revealed Oliver died as a result of head injuries.

Investigations ruled out natural disease, abnormalities in internal organs, or undiagnosed medical conditions.

It left only one possibility – the boy died as a result of deliberately inflicted injuries.

But who caused them?

It was a "fundamental certainty", prosecutor Mr Andrew Smith told the jury, that the fatal head injuries which eventually claimed Oliver's life were caused in the moments before that fateful 999 call.

Medical experts said he had been shaken forcefully and probably thrown as well.

That pointed the finger squarely at either his mother or father, who were the only two people in the house with him at the time.

And Ashlea's sister, Jade Sargent, gave evidence to say she saw Oliver a couple of hours before the emergency call and all seemed well with him then.

The couple were keen to paint a picture of happy families, that all was well.

Paul Thomas told police after the pair were arrested they "lived happily" and repeated this while giving evidence in court, saying he and Ashlea never had cross words with each other.

He said he was "over the moon" at becoming a dad and "couldn't have been happier".

Family and friends painted a glowing picture of the couple.

Denise Sargent, Ashlea's mother, gave evidence and told the court she was a good mother.

She said Paul Thomas was a good father too and would "dote" on his son.

"He was the boyfriend I would have liked for my daughter," Miss Sargent told the court.

"They were going to get married and I was more than happy about it. I called him son and he called me mom.

"I had no worries at all with Paul as a dad to Oliver, he was very hands on. He was a really good dad."

Jade Sargent, Ashlea's sister, said she had taken to motherhood like "a duck to water" and added that she trusted her to look after her own child at least once a week.

And Louise Hurcombe, manager of Trench Tots Day Nursery in Gibbons Road, Trench, where Ashlea worked, said she worked in the baby room and was "very good at her job".

She had never had to raise any issues with Ashlea regarding care of any children under her supervision.

Miss Hurcombe told police during an interview after Oliver's death that Ashlea was a "great mother" and described her as being very loving towards her son.

But the reality of life behind the curtains at the Thomas' modest home in Priory Way was somewhat different.

The builder, the jury heard, was a "reluctant" father who urged Ashlea to have an abortion when she fell pregnant just after they had got together in the summer of 2010.

She refused and they split up, remaining apart all the way through the 20-year-old's pregnancy and only getting back together a couple of months after Oliver was born.

Soon after they got back together, in March of 2012, the couple moved in together for the first time to the house in Priory Way, St Georges.

But despite their protestations they were leading a happy life, evidence suggested differently.

Paul Thomas, as he accepted himself under cross-examination while in the witness box, had a "short fuse".

He was, in the words, of prosecutor Mr Smith, someone who "let things get on top of him a bit too easily".

Paul finally admitted he sometimes lost his temper with his partner after texts between the pair were read out to the jury which blew apart claims they "never argued".

Giving evidence, Paul Thomas told the jury he and Ashlea had a "few little tiffs" over "completely silly things" but they were never serious.

He told the jury they had never lost their temper with each other or with Oliver.

But during cross-examination, prosecuting counsel Mr Andrew Smith referred to texts sent between the couple in which Ashlea accused him of constantly "flipping at her".

In another message, the jury heard, Ashlea told him she was miserable because "all you do is have a go at me", while other texts made reference to him pushing her up against a wall and bruising her arm by hitting her.

The reason for much of the tension, the prosecution claimed, was financial, and came to a dramatic and tragic head on July 27, 2012.

Investigations revealed Paul had been permanently overdrawn since May that year – and had increased his limit by £1,000 from £400 to £1,400 through a series of phone calls from January 2012.

On that fateful day, just a couple of hours before Oliver's collapse, the jury heard Paul phoned his bank asking for another extension to his overdraft, this time to £1,500.

Earlier that day, without his permission, Ashlea had put a deposit down for a family holiday in a cottage in November that year.

She, too, also made a call to her bank at 6.23pm, asking to cancel a direct debit for her rent she believed would be going out the next day. She had fallen into arrears, the jury was told.

More text evidence revealed Paul's frustration at the situation.

As someone who left the house at 5am to work on a building site in Derby and was sometimes not home until 7pm, he often spoke of "working for nothing" and moaned that there was more going out of the bank than was coming in.

That night, the prosecution say, he snapped, losing his temper with Oliver and causing the fatal injuries that claimed his life.

But, Mr Smith said, it was far from the first time he had been abusive towards his son.

Oliver first came to the attention of medical staff on March 13, 2012.

Health visitor Patricia Farley noticed three different bruises on Oliver's face during a routine check-up at Oakengates Medical Practice.

Ashlea Thomas told her the injuries had been caused by her son "headbanging" and hitting himself with his toys, an explanation the health visitor told the jury she thought at the time was "consistent and plausible".

But further examination of text evidence revealed at least one of the bruises had been inflicted the night before the visit when Paul was looking after Oliver on his own.

He told Ashlea that Oliver had banged his head on the doorframe of the kitchen as he carried him in for a feed.

It was an explanation questioned by the prosecution, who said Oliver would not have been sitting up unsupported at that stage and that Paul would have been carrying him cradling his head.

Further inconsistencies raised suspicion.

Paul also told police he had seen all three bruises on Oliver that night, but a text to Ashlea the following morning suggested the opposite, with him saying he "didn't have a clue" about two of them.

The couple took Oliver to hospital for the first time in May after claiming he had woken up screaming with a large lump on the back of his head.

Neither could provide an explanation for the lump and said it would go down and come back up again without warning.

On June 30, 2012, Oliver was back in Princess Royal again.

Ashlea told doctors and nurses he had been vomiting for five days and had a high temperature.

But a junior doctor, who stripped Oliver off because his clothes were "drenched in vomit", found more bruises on his back and legs when she examined him.

The couple were asked to provide an explanation for the bruises but said they could not – and Oliver was kept in overnight to be examined the following morning by a consultant paediatrician.

It was suspected the bruises were "non-accidental injuries".

The following day he was discharged, with the consultant saying he had "no concerns".

Ashlea had told him the injuries had been caused because Oliver was an active child who rolled over his toys. She said she had not put forward the explanation the day before because she was "stressed" and "anxious" about her son – and doctors accepted what she said.

It was thought Oliver was suffering from a viral infection and he was discharged.

On the day he was sent home, nurse Andrea Stevens told the court she saw Paul Thomas grab Oliver, who was lying on his back in a cot in the ward at the time, by one arm and one foot and "flipped" him over onto his side.

The builder told Oliver to "go to sleep", Mrs Stevens told the court, and Ashlea Thomas said to him: "Don't do that."

The nurse told the jury she thought it was "a bit harsh and inappropriate" at the time and it was, to the prosecution, further signs of that "short fuse".

The ongoing bruising, the fatal head injuries, and fractures to his collarbone and ribs which experts said were caused up to 10 days before his collapse by his chest being squeezed forcefully.

It all pointed to ongoing abuse at the hands of his short-tempered, stressed father.

He was the one, they said, who put Oliver to bed on July 27, the only adult who had any contact with him in the moments leading up to his collapse. Paul Thomas denied any wrongdoing throughout.

• Anyone who has concerns about the welfare of a child can contact the free, 24-hour NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000, text 88858 or email help@nspcc.org.uk

He told the jury in the witness box he "would never hurt his son" because he "meant everything to him".

He said he was "absolutely devastated" when he died and "didn't have a clue" why he had stopped breathing and collapsed on July 27.

But it was not enough to convince the jury with the weight of evidence against him.

Ashlea, be it through blind love, loyalty or some other reason, refused to reveal what was going on behind closed doors at their family home.

She tried to protect her husband.

When asked who had caused the fatal injuries to Oliver, she told the jury: "Nobody".

It was, as her own defence counsel Mr Gareth Evans conceded, a "stupid position" to take and one which, in his own words, would make her unlikely to win any popularity contests.

Today Paul was starting a 10-year stretch behind bars for what he did to their poor, defenceless son while Ashlea will bear the guilt for the rest of her life.