A mother has been found guilty of manslaughter after her child was thrown from a car after she failed to strap her into a car seat properly.
Morgan Kiely and her six-month-old son, Harry, were having a day at the beach, but things quickly took a tragic turn, as reported by the Daily Mail.
Back on July 13, 2022, Kiely - then 19 - and her friend Stevie Steel spent hours at Clacton Beach in Essex drinking wine and relaxing alongside baby Harry.
The pair had purchased three bottles of rosé wine at Aldi before heading to the seaside. Kiely bought two bottles, and Steel one.
After the beach visit, the two women, described as “just a bit tipsy and happy,” decided to drive themselves rather than accept a lift from Steel’s ex-boyfriend Mitchell Bassett, who had briefly joined them and offered to drive them to the pub.
Judge Robert Jay later told Kiely in court: "Alarm bells should have been ringing in your head at that point. You knew how much Stevie had drunk. You could and should have taken up Mitchell's offer. A mother should not agree to travel with a drunk driver."
Steel, who was behind the wheel of her Ford Focus, later admitted to causing death by careless driving while over the legal alcohol limit.
As they drove from the beach, heading to Kiely's mum's house to drop off Harry, disaster struck on Cherry Tree Avenue.
Steel became distracted and collided with a parked car. Despite driving within the 30mph limit, the Ford Focus flipped over and landed on its roof.
Kiely and Steel were both held upside down by their seatbelts. Harry, who was seated in the back, was thrown through an open window.
“He landed on the tarmac and as a young infant he had no way of protecting himself,” prosecutor Alex Stein told Chelmsford Crown Court. “He suffered a devastating skull fracture. It’s a very, very sad case.”
Harry was treated at the scene for over an hour before being rushed to the hospital, where he was declared dead just after 9:00PM, per The Sun.
Despite the efforts of emergency services and bystanders, including a retired paediatric nurse who performed first aid, the injuries were described as "unsurvivable."
Kiely was the front-seat passenger during the crash. Her son had been placed behind her in a car seat that had previously been installed with a base in her grandmother’s vehicle.
On that day, however, the seat was placed without the base in Steel’s car. A key witness said it was “highly likely” that Harry wasn’t strapped in properly.
Stein told the court: “That car seat had not been properly strapped in and more significantly he [Harry] had not been strapped into the seat itself properly."
The jury ultimately found Kiely guilty after deliberating for around five hours over two days.
In sentencing her, Judge Jay acknowledged both the gravity of the situation and Kiely’s overall parenting.
“Harry's safety was your responsibility. It should have been your primary concern that day,” he told her.
However, he also noted that her actions were out of character: “I think that it is obvious to everyone in this courtroom that you were a very good mother to Harry in all respects, and that this was a singleton failure.”
Kiely, now 22, was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence and has since left her job as a carer. The court heard she now has a four-month-old baby and continues to grieve the loss of her son.