Man accused of murdering girlfriend’s baby ‘shook toddler and banged his head hard on kitchen floor’

A man accused of murdering his girlfriend’s 22-month-old son shook the toddler and banged his head hard on the kitchen floor while changing his nappy, a trial has heard.

Jacob Marshall is said to have suffered ‘multiple and catastrophic injuries’ at the hands of his mother’s partner, Jonathan Simpson.

The toddler was found unconscious with a fatal brain injury at Emma Marshall’s family home on Belsford Way in Speke, Liverpool, on 12 July 2019.

Mr Simpson, 25, of no fixed address but from Winsford, Cheshire, is on trial at Liverpool Crown Court where he denies murder and manslaughter.

Jonathan Simpson, 25, is on trial for murder after Jacob Marshall (pictured) suffered ‘multiple and catastrophic injuries’ at his mother Emma Marshall’s family home in Speke, Liverpool

The defendant said he left Jacob in the living room watching a Disney movie and went into the back garden for a cigarette while Miss Marshall was out at the hairdressers.

He said he heard a ‘metallic bang’ and found Jacob ‘unresponsive’ at the bottom of the stairs, so asked a neighbour for help with CPR.

Mr Simpson admitted that he initially lied about Jacob falling off a sofa because it would look like ‘bad parenting’ to say he let him fall down the stairs.

At a previous hearing, the court heard how Mr Simpson had given ‘several different explanations’ for the child’s death two months short of his second birthday.

Prosecutors said he first claimed Jacob fell off a couch, later said ‘I dropped a baby down the stairs’ and then suggested Jacob fell down the staircase.

He previously told the jury Jacob was walking around the house looking for his mother when she left, but today denied the child became upset and wouldn’t stop crying, or that this made him angry. 

John Benson QC, prosecuting, said a paediatric pathologist, Dr Jo McPartland, gave evidence about Jacob’s subdural haemorrhage brain bleed and retinal eye haemorrhages.

He said she gave examples of the force required to cause his eye bleeds, such as ‘a high velocity car crash, falling from several storeys, or a substantial impact to the head’.

The barrister suggested Mr Simpson shook Jacob and banged his head on the kitchen floor while changing his nappy, which he denied. 

He added that he didn’t know why the toddler had cried for two minutes before becoming unresponsive and said he was ‘panicking’. 

Pictured: Floral tributes were left outside the family home in Liverpool where the toddler died in July 2019

Pictured: Floral tributes were left outside the family home in Liverpool where the toddler died in July 2019

Mr Benson also suggested bruises found on Jacob’s penis wouldn’t have been caused by falling down stairs, and claimed Mr Simpson pinched him there ‘a few times’, which the defendant denied. 

The hearing was told how Miss Marshall left the home at around 3pm and Mr Simpson called an ambulance at 3.47pm, having spoken to neighbour Stephen Forster around seven minutes before that.

He said Mr Simpson told jurors that after his girlfriend left he went and rolled a cigarette and smoked it, which took five or 10 minutes, then heard a bang.

The barrister suggested Mr Benson did something to Jacob in the ‘big gap’ between coming in from his smoke at 3.10pm and seeing the neighbour half-an-hour later, that left the toddler ‘very seriously unwell’ and unresponsive.

Mr Simpson denied this, or that he had his ‘fingers crossed’ hoping Jacob would come round and therefore ‘delayed doing anything’.

He denied that he saw Mr Forster arrive home before going outside and that if he hadn’t have seen him, he wouldn’t have called an ambulance.

Mr Simpson said: ‘I still would have called it at the same time’ and didn’t ring 999 immediately because he ‘panicked’.

Mr Benson said: ‘Can I suggest the reaction of somebody panicking, seeing a 22-month-old toddler unconscious, who you thought and you told the jury had fallen down the stairs, would be to get medical help?’

Mr Simpson replied: ‘And I did.’

He denied thinking ‘what am I going to say about this?’ before he rang 999 and told the operator Jacob had fallen down the back of the sofa and hit his head on a radiator.

A floral tribute left outside the property in Liverpool reads: 'Rest in peace little boy, fly high'

A floral tribute left outside the property in Liverpool reads: ‘Rest in peace little boy, fly high’ 

Mr Simpson told the court: ‘I said what had happened’, before conceding Mr Benson’s point that he actually told the operator ‘what didn’t happen’.

Mr Benson said Mr Simpson’s initial claim was ‘nonsense’.

He suggested Mr Simpson did everything to protect himself, not Jacob, ‘a 22-month-old toddler who was critically ill’.

Mr Simpson agreed that the first he told anyone Jacob fell down the stairs when he texted a police officer the next day.

In the text, Mr Simpson said: ‘I only said he fell off the couch because I didn’t want to look like a bad parent who wasn’t watching him.’

Mr Simpson denied he had been keen to go back to Winsford or that he was getting ‘frustrated’ because he wanted to get money owed from a friend.

Mr Simpson denies murder and manslaughter. 

The trial continues.