"EARLIER THE COURT HEARD HOW ROONEY HAD TOLD POLICE IN INTERVIEW THAT SHE DIDN'T KNOW HOW HARD SHE HAD SHAKEN HER BABY.
"I DIDN'T SHAKE HIM TO KILL HIM, OR TO CAUSE HIM HARM – I SHOOK HIM BECAUSE HE WAS SCREAMING AND GOING UNCONSCIOUS," SHE TOLD OFFICERS.
ROONEY HAS PLEADED NOT GUILTY TO MURDERING JOE AT TREVISKER FARM CAMP SITE, ST MERRYN, NEAR PADSTOW IN NORTH CORNWALL, ON JULY 1, 2007."
THE CORNISHMAN;
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The Cornishman's story on the on-going trial was published today under the heading, "I shook baby after he fell from the bed."
"A MOTHER accused of murdering her eight-month-old son broke down in the witness box as she explained to a court she shook her baby in a desperate bid to revive him after a fall," the story, which runs without a by-line, begins.
"Anne Marie Rooney, of Bristol Road, Quedgeley, Gloucestershire, recalled picking up baby Joe, shaking and cradling him in her arms to try to bring him round, a jury at Truro Crown Court was told yesterday," the story continues;
"The 27-year-old said: "He was laying face down on the floor – he was screaming and crying and he was red in the face.
"I picked him up by his babygrow but his face started to go whiter and whiter, his eyes rolled back in his head and his arms went floppy. He then went blue."
Demonstrating what she did next, the distraught defendant went on: "I turned him around, shook him, cradled him in my arms, shook him again and shouted 'Joe, Joe, come on Joe!'.
"I then took him outside to my friend Kathleen's caravan and said to her 'please help him, please fix him'."
Earlier the court heard how Rooney had told police in interview that she didn't know how hard she had shaken her baby.
"I didn't shake him to kill him, or to cause him harm – I shook him because he was screaming and going unconscious," she told officers.
Rooney has pleaded not guilty to murdering Joe at Trevisker Farm camp site, St Merryn, near Padstow in North Cornwall, on July 1, 2007.
She also denies his manslaughter.
The Crown maintains baby Joe was a victim of "shaken baby syndrome" and had suffered "devastating" head, brain and neck injuries.
A member of the travelling community, the defendant told the court yesterday how she was "delighted" when she discovered she was pregnant with Joe. She also said she had named her new baby after her own father.
"Joe was a very good baby – he never whinged or moaned and he ate well," she said in answer to questions from defence barrister Maura McGowan QC.
Mrs McGowan asked: "So what happened on the morning of Sunday, July 1, 2007?"
Rooney explained how her husband Felix had driven down to the wash block and she had put baby Joe in the middle of her bed and plumped up the duvet around him.
She told how she left the trailer to deposit some rubbish outside, the door had blown shut and she heard a second bang.
When she went back inside, her son was laying face down on the linoleum floor.
Friends drove him into Padstow, where an air ambulance took him to Treliske Royal Cornwall Hospital near Truro, where he died the following day.
The trial continues."
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
