Baby killer James Davis locked up for six years for death by dangerous driving

James Davis, 35, crashed into the two-week-old baby on Brownhills High Street on Easter Sunday last year before running away from the scene.

Jurors at Wolverhampton Crown Court took just two hours and six minutes to find Davis guilty of causing death by dangerous driving and causing death while uninsured on Friday.

The court was then told how Davis has 27 previous convictions including drink driving, driving without insurance and dealing cocaine.

Sentencing Davis, Judge John Butterfield said: "Ciaran's parents could be forgiven for thinking as they walked their baby their future was as bright and as sunny as the weather that day.

"I'm sorry to say within a few terrible moments all that was taken away from them and it is your actions which is responsible.

"A few seconds before you were travelling at 67mph on the High Street which has a 30mph limit. Your car was not registered and not insured and you knew these things but continued to drive the car anyway.

"You also saw the seatbelt rules not as something that applies to you. You were content to drive with 1.7mg of cannabis in your system. The cannabis impaired you.

"I am sure it is some operation of your phone, what happened with your phone is highly suspicious."

Justice Butterfield came to the conclusion Davis had been distracted on his phone at the moment of the crash and then subsequently wiped evidence from the online app he was using.

"The cruelness of fate in this care is too much to bear thinking about because you had no particular reason to be driving down the High Street. You had made an elongated journey for no particular reason than because it was a nice day.

"Likewise if the group with Ciaran's parents had been just a few steps further on or further back they would not have been on that precise patch of pavement that you ploughed through. But it did all happen and the reason it happened was because your standard of driving."

He said: "I do not think you are a monster. In time you showed remorse but a lot of your reactions subsequently was how it would affect you."

Footage from the day the crash happened shows Davis speeding around the town as Ciaran's parents Camaron Morris and Cody Holyman took him out for a walk for the first time since the 18-day-old boy had been released from hospital.

Justice Butterfield sentenced Davis to six and half years for causing death by dangerous driving, 18 months to run concurrently for causing death while uninsured and banned him from driving for seven-and-a-half years.

In a victim impact statement Ciaran's mother Ms Holyman described how she had not realised her collar bone had been broken until after her child had died.

She said: "We were heartbroken, we still are. My heart is forever missing a piece."

Meanwhile father Mr Morris described Davis as an "absolute scumbag" who deserved the maximum amount of jail time possible.