A man who shook a baby so hard the tot was left with life-changing injuries has been found guilty of attempted murder. Marc Lannen was jailed as a judge praised medics for saving the baby’s life through rapid surgery after the attack.
A jury at the High Court in Dundee found Lannen, 34, guilty of the murder bid on the four-month-old boy at an address in the city in August 2018.
The brute shook the boy, inflicting blunt force trauma to the head, and causing injury to the head through unknown means. He was found to have caused severe injury, permanent disfigurement, permanent impairment, and endangered his life.
Lord Young said: “Had it not been for the prompt intervention of the neurosurgical team at Ninewells Hospital it is likely he would have died and you would have faced an even more serious charge in this court.”
Medical staff gave evidence that the baby – who cannot be named for legal reasons – had been violently shaken for a sustained period.
Consultant neurosurgeon Kismet Hossain-Ibrahim told the trial that the injury to the baby boy was as bad as any he had seen during his 27-year career as a doctor.
Describing the child’s brain scan, Mr Ibrahim told the jury: “His life was at risk. We took the clot out. If we had not the most likely scenario, given the degree of mid-line shift, would be death –possibly within hours.”
He told the court that a 5mm shift in the mid-line – separating the left and right sides of the brain – would normally require emergency surgery. The compression from the clot in the baby’s brain meant the line had shifted four times as much.
“The degree of shift was quite rare,” he said. “It’s horrible. I have been a doctor for 27 years and I have rarely seen that degree of shift. It’s a marker of how extreme the injury is.
“It shows just how huge the left-sided clot was – it’s really massive. It’s probably two centimetres. That’s a horrific amount of mid-line shift.”
He told the jury that the boy had suffered a seizure lasting almost an hour and fresh bleeding in the brain showed the clot had taken place about an hour before hospital admission.
The child’s mum told the trial she had gone out with her brother to a tanning salon, McDonald’s, a car wash and a supermarket, leaving the child in Lannen’s care.
She said that after meeting Lannen and her son at Ninewells Hospital, the accused told her that the baby had a seizure, went stiff, cold, and then floppy and unresponsive.
The court heard how the boy – now aged six – requires additional support at school and is regularly assessed by a consultant paediatrician.
Lannen had denied shaking him but five doctors previously told the court the child’s injuries were a result of “abusive head trauma”. Lord Young remanded Lannen in custody.
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