Couple who staged death of baby daughter on bus jailed for 11 years
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A couple who staged the death of their baby in front of shocked passengers on a London bus have both been jailed for 11 years.
Drug addicts Jeffrey Wiltshire, 52, and Rosalin Baker, 25, concocted a "devious" plan to get away with the horrific abuse of 16-week-old Imani which culminated in her death in September last year.
Baker blamed her abusive and controlling boyfriend and claimed he had tried to frame her by forcing her on to the bus with their dead child in a sling.
But former rapper Wiltshire, who claimed to have fathered 25 children, insisted: "I'm not a life taker, I'm a baby maker."
Following a trial at the Old Bailey last month, they were cleared of murder but convicted of causing or allowing the death of their daughter, who was on the child protection register.
Sentencing, Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC said Imani had been born prematurely and her last days must have been "terrifying, painful and bewildering".
He told her parents: "Both of you at all times put your interests before those of a helpless and dependent baby for whom you were responsible."
He said they had told so many lies about what happened that their credibility was "always in doubt".
Imani's fatal head injuries were likened to those from a road crash or falling from a first-floor window, he said.
Even though the jury could not be sure who was responsible, Judge Hilliard said that given the extent of her injuries he had concluded that whoever had done it intended really serious bodily harm.
He described the cover-up on the bus as a "cynical charade".
"You used the dead body of your daughter as part of an attempt to conceal what really happened."
Additional reporting by Press Association