Brother’s hug was too long
NZPA-AAP London A baby, aged six months, was hugged to death by her stepbrother, aged 11, an inquest has been told. The “Sun” reported that the boy found the infant dead two hours after he held her to his chest when she was crying. The inquest in Gillingham, Kent, also heard how the tragedy led to the suicide 10 weeks later of the baby’s father, aged 30, found dead in his locked car with a pipe leading from the exhaust.
The Coroner, Mr Lionel Skingley, ruling that those involved should not be iden-
tified, said the two deaths were “inexorably linked.” The boy told the police that he held the baby to his chest for a minute then put her back in a cot with a dummy.
“I did really squeeze her hard. I did not mean to harm her, I meant to give her a cuddle,” he said.
A pathologist, Dr Michael Heath, said death was caused by the length of the hug, not its force. The baby’s mother told the hearing she had lost another baby through cot death two years earlier.
The Coroner ruled the baby’s death accidental.
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Press, 24 May 1985, Page 6
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196Brother’s hug was too long Press, 24 May 1985, Page 6
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