A twenty nine year old man from Salford has been jailed for 26 years for the attempted murder of a toddler in Blackpool
A jury at Preston Crown Court heard that the sickening and repeated assault by defendant Lewis Prince in which he slapped and punched the boy was captured in part on film.
He was also witnessed strangling and smothering the young victim.
The boy was taken to hospital with a number of injuries, including extensive bruising to his face and throat.
Expert medical evidence from the prosecution indicated that the toddler’s injuries were consistent with strangulation, and that the victim was in the penultimate stage of asphyxia.
Prince fled the address before police arrived and was arrested in a vehicle whilst travelling towards Manchester.
During the trial Prince accepted that he had lied in his police interview and he had in fact slapped the toddler to the face and squeezed his cheeks in an attempt to stop him from crying.
The 29-year-old denied attempted murder, stating that he at no point strangled nor smothered the victim.
The jury rejected that notion and took around an hour to find Prince unanimously guilty. He had already pleaded guilty to an assault by beating charge, which related to an assault on a woman.
Sitting at Preston Crown Court Judge Robert Altham, The Recorder of Preston, jailed Prince for 26 years. He also deemed Prince to be a dangerous offender and imposed a further four-year extended licence period.
DS Isobel Garratt, of West CID, said: “Prince’s sickening attack could quite easily have resulted in the victim losing his life. Fortunately, he has since made a full recovery but anyone who watched the harrowing footage of the assault will know that the outcome could quite easily have been different.
