A couple have been jailed over the death of their eight-week-old baby who was found to have suffered more than 60 broken bones.

Naomi Johnson, 24, and Benjamin O’Shea, 26, called paramedics to their home in Southwark, south London, after their daughter stopped breathing in April 2019, but they were unable to save her.

The couple repeatedly lied about the circumstances of her death, leading doctors to initially suspect a case of Sudden Unexplained Death in Infancy.

But they were arrested after a post-mortem revealed a catalogue of injuries suffered during at least seven incidents, including 41 fractures in her ribs and 24 fractures to various bones in Amina’s arms and legs.

Under police questioning, Johnson and O’Shea blamed paramedics for causing the broken bones by performing CPR.

They also claimed she could have died due to vaccines she was given by her GP a day before.

Text messages revealed a ‘manipulative and abusive’ relationship in which they described slapping another child and denying him water because he had soiled himself.

Inner London Crown Court also heard how Amina’s mum had phoned NHS 111 reporting that the baby had been coughing blood, but when a doctor called back and told O’Shea to get his wife to take her to the hospital, he failed to do so.

After Amina’s death, he forged a letter from the ‘Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’, a role which does not exist, telling police that any proceedings were ‘not in order’.

O’Shea also called police and pretended to be a neighbour, making comments that he hoped would shift the blame onto his wife.

He was not charged with perverting the course of jujstice or wasting police time.

Medics could not establish a precise cause of death and it was not possible to determine which parent was to blame for the injuries or who stood back and allowed them to happen, jurors were told.

But the judge said there was ‘no doubt that this is a case of the highest seriousness in terms of cruelty to children in terms of the injuries’.

The couple were found guilty on Friday of causing or allowing their baby to suffer serious physical harm, as well as two counts of cruelty to a child.

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