Derbyshire man jailed for 21-and-a-half years for the murder of his 11-year-old son - after he violently beat him and made it look like an accident

Michael Harrison’s son Mikey Harrison died after receiving “multiple blunt force” injuries at the hands of his father on June 18 last year.

Derby Crown Court heard how on the same day Harrison had beaten his son so ferociously in the family home in Heanor that the child sustained a bleed to his liver.

As his son suffered “increasing pain” from the bleed Harrison drove the boy to Shipley Country Park – to falsify an account that he had fallen from a tree.

Once at the park Harrison called an ambulance at around 1.20pm – four hours after he had beaten his son, who was now dying.

Judge Shaun Smith KC told Harrison: “You embarked upon a charade fully intended to protect yourself. That’s because you had attacked your 11-year-old son.

"You hit and punched him many times and one of the punches was so hard that you lacerated his liver – the eventual cause of his death.

"Rather than face up to what you did you made a call to the ambulance service to report that Mikey had fallen from a tree. The best efforts of doctors were not enough.”

In a statement read out to the court by the clearly upset judge, Mikey was described as “special and beautiful”.

“He was sweet, funny and shy with a beautiful smile. He loved drawing and his art classes at school.

"He loved his music and singing and his teddies and would line them up in his bedroom and talk to them.”

Prosecutor Peter Joyce described how paramedics found the “undernourished” 11-year old, who weighed just three stones and 11 pounds, in Harrison’s van at the park.

He said: “Mikey went into cardiac arrest, was rushed to Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham where, despite the best efforts of doctors, he was pronounced dead at 2.39pm that day.”

In the days that followed Harrison claimed the fall had taken place during a game of hide and seek and he was unaware how it had happened.

However, Mr Joyce said: “The entire account was a fiction made up to cover up that he himself had fatally injured his son.”

Mr Joyce said while driving the boy to the park he would have been “in a great deal of pain for a considerable period of time”.

On June 21 police found their home had been “stripped and cleaned”.

Mr Joyce said: “It had been stripped of almost every item you would expect to find in a home. All furniture had been removed.

"In the kitchen there was no washing machine or cooker, all the cupboards were empty and there was no food.

"It’s clear the defendant stripped the house of everything in order to remove any prospect of any evidence of what he had done.”

The court heard the van Harrison used to drive Mikey to the park has never been found.

On June 29 a witness called police, telling them “the defendant had been responsible for Mikey’s death”.

A post-mortem report found Mikey had sustained “multiple blunt force injuries” to both sides of his face and head, back, arms and legs and there was evidence of impact with a “long, thin object or edge”.

The report showed signs of “severe blunt force impact to the abdomen” and he received “many blows to many areas of his body”.

While a blow thought to have caused bleeding to Mikey’s liver was thought to be a punch, delivered with “force”.

Harrison had initially denied murder, however he changed his plea to guilty after the emergence of the medical findings in April this year.

Speaking about Mikey’s injuries, Mr Joyce said the pain would have got more intense, however he added: “It happened shorty after 9.30am and he called an ambulance four hours later while the pain increased.”

A doctor’s evidence also found, crucially, that, had Mikey received “prompt treatment” he might have been saved.

Harrison, of Eaton Terrace, Nottingham, admitted murder.

Jailing him for life with a minimum of 21 years and six months, Judge Smith told him there was “no evidence” of a “build-up” of issues leading up to the attack other than as a result of Harrison “going crazy”.

He said: “What you did that morning ended the life of a little boy and the lives of many others.

"He is gone from their lives forever, although not from their hearts and minds, but that’s all they've got left.”