Dad who killed 12-week-old baby by violently shaking her is jailed for nine years

A dad has been jailed for nine years after he killed his baby daughter by violently shaking her when she was just 12 weeks old.

Tyler Vallance left his tragic daughter Isabella with catastrophic brain injuries and broken ribs after he launched the shocking attack on the tot in December 2012.

The young child had overcome a premature birth at 34 weeks only to lose consciousness in her father’s arms as he shook her in a violent rage.

The court heard Vallance, 21, first attacked Isabella in November 2012 when he gripped her around the chest and shook her breaking eight ribs and causing a bleed on her brain. Incredibly, she survived and despite doctors examining her, no injuries were detected.

On December 7, Vallance attacked her again and this time caused further damage to her brain as well as breaking another rib along with her thigh bone and tibia. She was taken to hospital, but died five days later.

The child's mother, 20-year-old Jessica Wiggins was handed a nine-month jail term suspended for 12 months after she was convicted after trial of allowing Isabella's death at the hands of her violent ex-partner.



Yesterday in court, Vallance was described by the prosecution as a manipulative man who had threatened Wiggins with suicide if she ever left him. In evidence, the court heard how he had attacked her in public on at least two occasions, once grabbing her throat and hair in front of friends.

Judge Juckes, sentencing Vallance, said he was a "violent and unpredictable" man, who had issues with anger management and the condition attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for which he took medication.





Addressing Vallance, he said: "The killing was as a result of a sudden an extreme loss of temper. What you did was very close to an intention to cause GBH.

"If you shake and twist a small baby what on earth do you expect to happen? You must have known how badly you had hurt her. It seems you acted in the face of an exceptional support network.

"Little Isabella didn't take to Tyler, and it was Jessica's conclusion that the baby had been put off him by his angry shouting while she was still pregnant. Tyler, you resented Isabella not warming to you.

"Between 14 and 21 November you assaulted her, and you must have gripped her so tightly round the chest that it fractured eight ribs and you shook her because of her dural membrane bleed.

"It was a serious assault on a vulnerable child. You must have known you were causing her pain.

"What you had done Tyler is to twist Isabella's legs and at about the same time gripped her and shaken her so violently that you caused catastrocphic bleeding in her head from which she never recovered. It was an extremely violent assault."





Judge Juckes accepted Wiggins, who had had to raise her own siblings, was "a good mother", accepting evidence in the trial from both social and healthcare workers that she was "skilled" and competent.

However, he said he could not square the "truly remarkable imbalance" of her fine ability as a mother, with her apparent failure to share concerns about Vallance - whom she knew could be violent - with the hospital doctors treating mortally wounded Isabella, and later the police.

He said it was only when a friend in whom she had confided threatened to tell police himself of her suspicion Vallance had carried out the fatal attack, she "hinted" to police of her fears.

Judge Juckes told Wiggins: "At the heart of what is worse is what you did throughout what followed (the fatal assault). You lied to doctors and police about what you knew or suspected.”

He told Wiggins, as she wept in the dock, that her failure to protect baby Isabella meant she must be given a custodial term, but suspended the sentence for 12 months, with a supervision order.

Vallance who admitted the killing, was also sentenced to 18 months to run concurrently at Worcester Crown Court today after pleading guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm in an earlier attack on little Isabella in 2012.