Killer who crushed toddler to death jailed today

The killer of tragic toddler Alfie Lamb was jailed at the Old Bailey today.

Stephen Waterson, 26, made Alfie, who was three, sit in the footwell of his Audi convertible for a journey from Sutton to Croydon, in February last year.

During the journey Waterson moved his seat backwards twice, crushing the little boy’s chest with up to 81kg of weight and suffocating him to death in a tiny 9.5cm gap.

Alfie died an agonising death, collapsing before the car reached Croydon. He clung to life for three days in hospital.

His mother, 24-year-old Adrian Hoare, and Waterson invented a series of lies to avoid responsibility.

Waterson, the son of former government minister Nigel Waterson, pleaded guilty to gross negligence manslaughter in September.

Today Waterson was sentenced to seven years and six months.

Alfie´s mother Hoare was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for child cruelty, common assault of a witness and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Waterson’s half-sister, Samantha Dawson, who has disowned her brother following Alfie’s death, previously said that Alfie´s parents were “rough with him, they would smack him and shout at him. He was not loved. 

“On one occasion, we were all in the car and Alfie was squashed in the foot-well. I was horrified. He actually said ‘Mummy, I can’t move’. I shouted at Stephen to move him.”