A six-month-old baby died after being ejected from a car window during a crash, allegedly because he was not properly secured in his car seat, a court has heard.
Morgan Kiely, then 19, had spent the afternoon of July 13, 2022, drinking with a friend at Clacton Beach in Essex while accompanied by her infant son, Harry.
As the pair drove away from the beach around 6:30 p.m., their car—a Ford Focus driven by Kiely’s friend Stevie Steel—rolled over and landed on its roof. During the crash, baby Harry was thrown through an open window. He suffered catastrophic injuries, including a fractured skull, and later died in the hospital that night.
Prosecutors at Chelmsford Crown Court allege that Harry’s car seat was not properly secured, and that he was not strapped in correctly. Kiely has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter.
The court was told that Kiely had been sitting in the front passenger seat while her son was placed in the rear seat directly behind her. Steel, from Crayford, Kent, has already admitted to causing death by careless driving while over the legal alcohol limit.
According to prosecutor Alex Stein, the two women met up around 3 p.m. and bought three bottles of Prosecco before heading to the beach. They spent several hours there, and were briefly joined by a young man they knew. After finishing one of the bottles, the women left with Harry and began driving back.
On the way home, Steel reportedly became distracted and crashed into a parked car on Cherry Tree Avenue in Clacton. The vehicle flipped, leaving both women suspended upside down by their seatbelts.
Stein told the court: “Very sadly, that child’s seat had not been strapped properly into the seatbelt, and Harry hadn’t been strapped into the seat properly. He was thrown out of the open window and suffered a devastating skull fracture. It is a very, very sad case.”
Bystanders, including a retired pediatric nurse, rushed to help. Paramedics treated Harry at the scene for over an hour before rushing him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead around 9 p.m.
Despite the tragic circumstances, prosecutors acknowledged that Kiely appeared to be a loving and devoted mother, and said every effort was made to save Harry following the accident.
The trial is ongoing.
