A man who shook his baby son so violently that it caused “catastrophic” brain injuries has been told he will spend the next 20 years in jail for the child’s murder.
Lewis Oliver Rowland was 13 weeks old when he sustained life-changing injuries in the attack in November 2015.
The child was left with a range of disabilities and died three years later from complications arising from surgery.
It was the prosecution’s case that the injuries Lewis suffered in 2015 were a “significant cause of his death”.
Craig Rowland, 29, from Millington Park in Portadown, County Armagh, denied murdering his son.
He had admitted wilful neglect, but after his trial last October the jury convicted him of murder.
Rowland was given an automatic life sentence at the time, but on Thursday the judge imposed a tariff of 20 years before he can be considered for parole.
The judge revealed that despite the jury’s verdict, Rowland continues to not accept responsibility for what he did and has blamed medical staff for his son’s death.
The child died in his foster mother’s arms in October 2018, having suffered complications arising from surgery to insert a feeding tube into his stomach.
He was three years old.
Also sentenced today was Lewis’s mother Laura Graham, who is 32 and from Edward Street in Lurgan.
Prior to the trial, both she and Rowland admitted a charge of wilfully neglecting their son on 20 November, 2015 by failing to obtain timely medical treatment.
The pair brought Lewis to Craigavon Area Hospital after the attack in 2015 where medical examinations showed that he had suffered a serious brain injury.
Later that afternoon, Lewis was rushed to Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children with a brain bleed.
His injuries resulted in a permanent and severe disability.
During the four week trial, medical experts said the brain injury Lewis had sustained as a baby was likely caused by a “forceful shaking episode”.
One doctor told the murder trial that the child’s brain injury was “one of the most severe” he had seen during his 10 years of practice.
He said it was sustained within a 24 hour period of Lewis being admitted to hospital and was akin to one suffered during a road traffic collision or a fall from an “enormous height”.
Graham was handed a combination order consisting of three years probation and 100 hours community service.
On that same neglect charge, Rowland had 12-month sentence imposed which will run concurrently with the 20-year tariff.
