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Saturday 6 June 2015

'Please can I have a drink?' Tragic last pictures of Shanay, 7, running barefoot to a shop looking for fluids - just hours before she was found dead with 50 injuries after years of cruelty at hands of aunt and grandmother

Shanay Walker caught on video before her death at family's hands
Desperate and thirsty, a seven-year-old girl is captured on CCTV cameras asking a shopkeeper for something to drink just hours before she was found dead.
The footage shows Shanay Walker running barefoot into a corner shop the night before her frail bruised body was discovered at the home of her aunt and grandmother.
The child was subjected to months of violent punishment by her 'strict' churchgoing aunt and suffered a 'sustained, vicious and brutal beating' before she died, a jury heard. 
Her aunt, Kay-Ann Morris, 24, and grandmother Juanila Smikle, 54, were today sentenced to eight years and four years in jail, respectively, after being found guilty of cruelty.
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Desperate: Wearing her matching pink pyjamas, Shanay asks a shopkeeper for something to drink. Hours later, her frail and bruised body was found at the home of her aunt and grandmother in Nottingham
Desperate: Wearing her matching pink pyjamas, Shanay asks a shopkeeper for something to drink. Hours later, her frail and bruised body was found at the home of her aunt and grandmother in Nottingham
Heartbreaking: CCTV footage captures the seven-year-old girl walking barefoot through the corner shop
Heartbreaking: CCTV footage captures the seven-year-old girl walking barefoot through the corner shop
Jailed: Shanay's aunt, Kay-Ann MorrisFour year sentence: Grandmother Juanila Smikle, 54
Jailed: Shanay's aunt, Kay-Ann Morris, 24, left, and grandmother Juanila Smikle, 54, right, were today sentenced to eight years and four years in jail, respectively, after being found guilty of cruelty
Morris was cleared of murder after the trial at Nottingham Crown Court. 
In the 46-second security clip, Shanay is seen wandering down the aisles in her pyjamas before stopping to speak to the shopkeeper behind the counter shortly before 9pm on 30 July last year.
The following day, her body, covered with more than 50 injuries, was found in her bed at the family home in Bestwood, Nottingham.
Shanay suffered regular punishments at the hands of her aunt and grandmother, who were given care of the child after her mother was forced to give her up following depression, the court heard. 

The child's death is now the subject of a serious case review by the Local Safeguarding Children Board, who will look at whether any opportunities were missed to protect Shanay.
The court was told how Morris, a Seventh-day Adventist, shoved food in Shanay's mouth and would strike her on the hands with a hairbrush. 
Between July 2012 and July 2014, Morris would punish her niece by dragging her by the hair and stuffing clothes in her mouth. On one occasion, she threw Shanay into a wall after she stole water.
She also forced Shanay to eat food she did not want as a punishment for stealing food, and told the child to run up and down the stairs repeatedly, it was heard.
The court was also told that her grandmother Smikle had cruelty 'in her DNA' and had inflicted similar evil punishments on her own eight children. 
Seeking help: Barely taller than the counter top, Shanay speaks to the shopkeeper hours before her death
Seeking help: Barely taller than the counter top, Shanay speaks to the shopkeeper hours before her death
Jailed: Kay-Ann Morris was sentenced to eight years in prisonTragic: Shanay, pictured, suffered punishments at the hands of her aunt and grandmother
Tragic: Shanay, right, suffered punishments at the hands of her aunt, Kay-Ann Morris, left, and grandmother. Morris was sentenced to eight years in prison after being found guilty of cruelty at Nottingham Crown Court

Smikle, 54, was found guilty of four counts of cruelty, and jailed for four years. Morris was found guilty of one charge of cruelty against Shanay and sentenced to eight years in prison. 
Morris was also charged with murder but was cleared by the jury. 
Sentencing Morris, Mr Justice MacDuff said she had caused the 'lovely' schoolgirl 'untold misery' by 'trying to break her like a wild horse'.
He described the events as 'just about the worst case of child cruelty it is possible to imagine'.
He told Morris that although she was found not guilty of murdering Shanay, he was satisfied that she 'beat her over and over shortly before she died', adding: 'I will be loyal to the jury's verdict.'
You tried to break her like a wild horse - by punishing severely every time you perceived her to be misbehaving. But she refused to be broken; when you beat her, she stood up to you. And you could not bear that she refused to be cowed
Mr Justice MacDuff 
He said: 'It is perfectly clear to me that the jury could not be sure that it was you who directly caused the head injury from which Shanay died; that it may possibly have been caused in some other way. 
'She was a small, vulnerable seven-year-old girl who had been placed in your care under a special guardianship order.
'Your ill treatment of that little girl was frequent and wicked and lasted over the two years when she was in your care. 
'You sent her to school on many occasions with cuts and bruises which you had inflicted. You hit her, you taunted her and you abused her in unimaginable ways. 
'You tried to break her like a wild horse - by punishing severely every time you perceived her to be misbehaving. 
'But she refused to be broken; when you beat her, she stood up to you. And you could not bear that she refused to be cowed.
'These matters went on over those two years, causing this little girl untold misery.' 
A post-mortem report showed Shanay had more than 50 injuries on her body and had died of a brain injury.
The court heard how she was placed under Morris's care in a special guardianship order when she was just five years old when her biological mother, Morris' sister-in-law, struggled to care for her. 
However, Richard Pratt QC said she soon became the victim of regular punishments for behaviour such as failing to eat quickly enough or 'fighting' while brushing her teeth.
Final moment: The child is seen running across a courtyard to the shop on the night of July 30 2014
Final moment: The child is seen running across a courtyard to the shop on the night of July 30 2014

Jurors were told the schoolgirl faced a range of disciplines including being placed in the bath and having water thrown over her, being forced to stand on a landing for 20 minutes, and having the palms of her outstretched hands struck with a hairbrush.
Mr Pratt added witnesses questioned by the police following Shanay's death described Morris as a 'very strict' parent who frequently made her niece by shouting at her.
Others told how Shanay was 'hysterical' at times, had 'lost her sparkle' after moving in with 'stern looking' Morris, and went from being a 'bubbly' child when her aunt wasn't around to 'introverted and anxious' when she was nearby. 
It also emerged Shanay had complained to her teachers about what was happening at home but investigations found that the little girl's cuts and bruises were accidental. 
The court heard teachers at Shanay's primary school had noticed injuries to her which were recorded in Safeguarding Referral forms and then shown to a social worker.
But Morris gave explanations for the marks, telling staff a burn mark on the child's thigh was because she had stood too close to a radiator. 
Mr Pratt said she also claimed Shanay 'hurt herself'.
He described how in the hours before her death, Shanay was seen running from Smikle’s home barefoot and in her pyjamas.
When asked by two schoolgirls playing nearby if she was alright, she said she wasn’t because 'her nana and her auntie were being horrible to her'.
She then sought refuge in a local convenience store, where she was collected by the pair - with Smikle allegedly saying 'I don’t care if it hurts' when she grabbed her granddaughter by the arm.
Mr Pratt said that was the last time Shanay was seen alive by anyone outside her family.
He added police were alerted to Shanay’s death by Morris’ twin sister, Kerry-Ann Morris, a serving soldier in the Royal Artillery, who was stationed in Germany. 
Morris had called her sibling in the early hours of July 31 last year to say her niece had been badly hurt after she fell down a flight of stairs.
However, the court heard that after the call was cut off, Kerry-Ann told military police in Germany, who then contacted officers in Nottingham.
Mr Pratt said that when police went to the family home, a council flat, they were met by a ‘distressed and erratic’ Morris who told them: 'Baby not asleep. Baby is dead.'
Shanay's mother, Leanne Walker, 21, told the jury she had received a phone call from her sister on the morning of her daughter's death, with Morris saying: 'I'm sorry. I wasn't strong enough.'
In a statement today, Shanay's mother, Leann Walker said: 'My beautiful daughter Shanay was entrusted to the care of family members who I believed would love and look after her.
'Instead she was the victim of ongoing abuse and tragedy and her life was cut short before she could become the lovely woman I know she would have grown up into.
'Juanila Smikle and Kay Ann Morris have shown little remorse for their actions. It hurts and sickens me to know of the pain Shanay would have been in.
'I have lost my daughter and my other daughters have been denied the chance to get to know their sister.

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