Kayden Walker case: Murder-accused father ‘could be heavy-handed’
A father accused of murdering his baby son by shaking him told a jury he only gave him ‘a little shake to try and rouse him’ but claimed he could be ‘heavy-handed’.
Ricky Walker, 27, wept in the witness box as the court was shown a video of him introducing newly born Kayden to an older sibling.
But he was adamant when quizzed about his handling of Kayden at the family’s Black Country home in the minutes before the child’s death that he had not used excessive force. He told the court: “I still say no, I didn’t shake him hard. He’s only a baby, but I am heavy-handed.”
He said he panicked because the six-month-old had appeared to slip under his blanket in his baby bouncer and appeared lifeless when Walker picked him up.
He put an ear to his chest but could not hear the baby breathing. “I was saying ‘come on Kayden, come on’. I was really, really panicking,” he told the court.
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Walker said he carried the child to the open patio door ‘for air’, giving him ‘a little shake’. When there was no response, he said he put the child on the floor and phoned 999.
Kayden was taken to Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital but had suffered brain damage and bleeding to the brain and eyes and was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Walker told the court that when the baby’s mother Laura Davies, 25, had left the council flat in Walnut Close, Moxley, Walsall, 45 minutes earlier, the child was in normal health apart from being ‘ a bit niggly’ which he put down to teething problems.
His only explanation for Kayden’s death was that he must have suffocated under the blanket when Walker’s back was turned but this has been ruled out by all the medical experts.
Walker, of Kendrick Road, Moxley, denies murdering Kayden on June 12, 2016, and child cruelty. Both he and Davies deny causing or allowing the death of their son.
The trial continues.
