Baby Charlotte weeps father

By Tom Kelly

A BUSINESSMAN accused of murdering his baby in a fit of temper broke down yesterday as he told how he had adored his daughter.

Mark Latta, 41, dismissed claims that he smashed ten-week-old Charlotte’s skull on a hard surface in a bedroom as the rest of his family had Sunday lunch downstairs.

Earlier, Winchester Crown Court had heard that Charlotte was found to have 32 separate fractures to her body, and an injury to her head had caused her extensive brain damage.

Yesterday, Latta told the jury that his daughter ‘meant the world’ to him and he had been devastated by her death.

Sobbing and wiping his eyes, Latta said: ‘I loved Charlotte, absolutely loved her. I would feed Charlotte in the mornings before I went to work.’

He said he had been planning to take a less hands-on role in his IT company, The PowerWorks, so he could be with her more often.

‘I am a completely family-orientated man, ’ he said. ‘My wife and I enjoyed simple family things more than anything else.

‘Wherever we went we would always end up buying Charlotte some pretty clothes. She was always the centre of attention.’

Latta said he and his wife Sharon, 29, were ‘over the moon’ when Charlotte was born. ‘She was so pretty. She had the same pale blue eyes as Sharon.’

Latta denied loosing his temper and attacking Charlotte at the four-bedroom family home in Bishop’s Waltham, near Southampton, in December 2001. He said: ‘I never harmed her, I never mishandled her, I never shook her, I never banged her head on anything.’

He described how on the day of the alleged attack he was trying out a new feeding technique. ‘On the third attempt she started to feed again but was gulping her milk rather strangely, ’ he said. Suddenly, as if she coughed, milk strayed from the side of the bottle, the court was told.

‘For the first moment I thought she was refusing the feed so I was thinking about taking the bottle out of her mouth, but within a short period of time her eyes started to close.

‘I thought she can’t be going to sleep and then her eyes rolled back in her head a bit and immediately I realized there was something wrong.’

He called out to his wife, who tried to resuscitate Charlotte. When this failed to work he shouted downstairs to his mother-in-law to call an ambulance.

He said: ‘I could hear Charlotte making rasping noises from deep in her chest.’ Charlotte was taken by ambulance to the Royal Winchester Hospital, where doctors discovered the extent of her injuries.

Latta said: ‘I couldn’t believe it. Why should she have fractures? I didn’t believe anyone could harm Charlotte.’

His only explanation at the time was that the child could have suffered something like brittle bone disease, but medical examinations ruled out any such condition.

Latta wiped away tears as he described how Charlotte died in his arms on December 4, 2001, two days after the alleged attack, when her life-support machine was turned off.

Two days later Latta and his wife were both arrested on suspicion of murder and causing Charlotte grievous bodily harm.

They were kept in separate police cells and Latta described how he could hear his wife crying through the night.

Latta denies murder. Judge Mr. Justice Geoffrey Grigson has already ordered the jury to find him not guilty on two charges of causing her grievous bodily harm.

The trial continues.

 

(from The Daily Mail)

Notes

IT company – Information Technology company – an organization that deals with computers and other electronic equipment to store and send information

brittle bone disease – a disease that makes bones easily broken