Brute facing jail for newborn baby attack – weeks after the tot lost mum to cancer
A MAN is facing jail after leaving a newborn baby with a broken rib and fractured skull just weeks after the vulnerable tot lost her mum to cancer.
Mark Tannahill, 38, inflicted the horrific injuries on the tiny baby - as well as bruising to her face, neck and stomach.
The child was left in his care after her mother tragically died in August 2021 following a short battle with aggressive ovarian cancer.
In the days and weeks that followed, the baby’s grandmother began noticing unexplained bruises appearing on her face and body.
Concerned, she contacted social services on September 17, 2021, after taking advice from friends who were nurses.
But when she spotted blood in the child’s vomit the following day, she took her to hospital to be checked.
Dr Lawrence Armstrong, paediatric consultant at Crosshouse University Hospital in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, told the court he had given the child full body x-rays and discovered she had two fractures to her skull and one to her ribs.
He said: “Based on medical evidence, they were non-accidental injuries.”
When he was arrested, Tannahill tried to claim the child had got the bruises on her face from ‘tummy time’.
He tried to claim the eight-week-old had been “laying on her belly for a couple of hours and must be from the dummy pressing in.”
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But medics said the facial marks “could have been from someone holding the dummy in.”
The grandmother also told the court on another occasion when she questioned ‘finger bruises’ she’d seen on the baby’s neck, Tannahill said: “It must be from when I’m holding her to wind her. I don’t know my own strength.”
The child’s grandmother gave evidence to the court saying she saw swelling to the inside of her mouth and saw muslin squares ‘stained in blood’.
When police quizzed Tannahill about the injury, he said the baby had “clattered her mouth off the bottle and it was bleeding, but she went right back to feeding. She was fine.”
He also tried to claim bruising on her stomach and the fractured rib could have been from him accidentally laying on her when they were sleeping.
During Tannahill's police interview in February 2022, he said: “I fell asleep on the couch on her and maybe I’ve been laying on her. That’s the only thing I can think of that might have caused the bruising.”
Witnesses also told Kilmarnock Sheriff Court they had heard Tannahill, from Crosshouse, yelling at the distressed child to “Shut the f**k up” on two different occasions.
On one of those occasions a gardener testified Tannahill was in the house alone with the child while he worked in the garden and heard him screaming “take it, take it, keep it in” at the child over the top of “extremely loud” rock music.
Urging the jury to convict, prosecutor Fraser Alexander said: “In the 20 years I have been a criminal lawyer this is perhaps the most upsetting case I’ve ever tried.”
Defending advocate Drew McKenzie told the court the prosecution witnesses were not consistent and argued no one had ever seen Tannahill actually physically hurt the child.
But the jury rejected his claims and found Tannahill guilty of threatening behaviour and of assaulting the baby by compressing, shaking or inflicting trauma to her head and body to her severe injury and danger to her life after a week-long trial.
Tannahill showed no emotion when the verdict was read.
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He was bailed to appear next month for sentencing but Sheriff Colin Bissett warned him to expect jail.
He said: “The nature of the offences are very serious. I’m going to warn you that a substantial custodial sentence is utmost in my mind and you should set your affairs in order.”