Man found guilty of punching five-day-old baby in the face
David Hardy denied assault, claiming he had thought the infant was a doll
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Your support makes all the difference.A man has been found guilty of punching a five-day-old baby girl in the face.
The baby, Elsie Rose, was hit in the face at a Tesco supermarket in Baguley, south of Manchester, on 5 September.
She was in a baby seat in a supermarket trolley next to her older sister when the attack happened.
Her attacker, David Hardy, 64, denied assault and told Salford Magistrates' Court he had thought the baby was a doll.
“I thought I was just going to make the girl laugh. I don’t know why I thought that,” he told the court.
“I thought it was a little girl’s dolly.”
Hardy said he was “wracked with guilt” over the incident and said it was “a stupid instant decision” and that he had intended to “have a joke and a bit of a laugh”.
Elsie was taken directly to hospital and was kept overnight for checks before being discharged the next day.
She suffered a red mark to the face, but was not seriously harmed.
Hardy was fined £900, ordered to pay £500 in court costs and £100 in compensation, the Manchester Evening News reports.
District Judge Sam Goozee said he found Hardy’s claim he thought the baby was a doll “implausible”.
“At the point you struck out you did so with the intention and knowing Elsie was a baby, not a doll.”
Elsie’s grandfather stormed out of the court after the sentence was read, branding the punishment “a f*****g joke mate”.
Outside the court the two families were subsequently involved in angry exchanges and security guards were called to break up a tussle.
The baby’s uncle, Luke Temple, said of Hardy: “He should have got a custodial sentence for him to think about what he did.”
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