Alfie Lamb car seat death: Man jailed for crushing boy to death
“Manipulative” Stephen Waterson will serve more than seven years after he crushed the three-year-old. …
Image copyright Met Police A man who crushed a three-year-old boy to death with a car seat has been jailed for more than seven years.
Stephen Waterson, 26, inflicted irreversible brain injuries on Alfie Lamb, his girlfriend’s son, who was sat in the footwell behind him in 2018.
Waterson initially denied manslaughter but changed his plea to guilty before a retrial in September.
Alfie had been at his mother Adrian Hoare’s feet at the time. She was jailed for child cruelty in May.
Sentencing Waterson at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Kerr described him as “cunning, manipulative, threatening, and controlling”.
Justice Kerr said: “I do not find you were annoyed with Alfie and moved your seat back because of that annoyance.”
But he said he was satisfied the nightclub worker from Croydon moved his car seat back twice “for your own comfort”.
Described by police as “arrogant, selfish and deeply unpleasant”, Waterson had lied to detectives about what happened and threatened his girlfriend and two friends who were also in his Audi convertible on 1 February 2018.
Mr Justice Kerr sentenced him to five years and six months for the manslaughter.
It is the first time anyone in the UK has died from crush asphyxiation as a result of an electronic car seat, police said.
Waterson was handed a further two years for intimidation and 18 months for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, to run concurrently.
Hoare, 24, of Gravesend, Kent, watched as her son was crushed in front of her and then lied to protect her boyfriend.
She was sentenced to two years and nine months but cleared of manslaughter.
During her trail prosecutors said Alfie was crying during a return journey from a shopping trip to Sutton, south London.
When he continued to moan, Waterson reversed the chair twice, saying, “I won’t be told what to do by a three-year-old”, Hoare told the jury.
The maximum space in the footwell was 30cm, and, at the touch of a button, that could be reduced to just 9.5cm, the Old Bailey heard.
Alfie collapsed in the car and died in hospital from his injuries three days later.
Hoare eventually confessed what happened to her half-sister Ashleigh Jeffrey in a taped conversation handed to police.
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC read out a victim impact statement from Ms Jeffrey.
She said: “He [Alfie] was always smiling. His death has had such a profound effect on my life.”
“No sentence will be enough but today we finally gave Alfie a voice and justice has been done.”
Barmaid Emilie Williams, 20, who had been in the car with Waterson and Hoare, admitted conspiring to pervert the course of justice after being threatened and “coerced” into lying by Waterson.
She was sentenced to five months imprisonment suspended for 18 months and 100 hours of unpaid work, to be completed after she gives birth.
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