Policeman Colin David Randall killed baby son with a single punch

A BRISBANE court has heard disturbing details of how a Queensland police officer killed his 10-week-old baby son with a single punch on the first day he was left alone with the infant.

Senior Constable Colin David Randall, 38, pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

• Policeman pleads guilty to baby son’s manslaughter

IT was a regular Saturday afternoon when police officer Colin David Randall killed his 10-week-old baby son by punching him in the stomach.

Senior Constable Randall and his family, who had been ill with the flu, woke early and ate breakfast before the 40-year-old was left alone with his son Kye for the first time.

His then wife, Debbra Chambers, and their older daughter went to the shops nearby their home in Victoria Point.

It was then that Randall lent down and committed what Justice Peter Davis QC described as a “horrendous attack on a 10-week-old baby”, the court heard this morning.

The six-kilogram baby boy died after suffering severe abdominal injuries on June 28, 2014.

He received CPR for almost three hours before being pronounced dead.

Randall last week pleaded guilty in the Brisbane Supreme Court to the manslaughter of his son, only days before his murder trial was scheduled to begin.

A court sketch of Senior Constable Colin David Randall.

During a sentencing hearing, the court today heard medical evidence showed the baby’s liver had been “pulped” by the sheer force of the attack.

The only explanation given to the court was that Randall was “frustrated”.

Crown prosecutor Philip McCarthy said the now suspended officer spontaneously attacked the baby after being unable to get a work transfer with the QPS to Hervey Bay, where a woman he had been having an affair with was buying an investment property and had family ties.

The court heard the blow to the baby’s stomach happened at a time Randall was left alone with the baby and was sleep deprived after his family had come down with the flu.

“Your client, on this day, committed a willed act, which was punching a 10-week-old baby…” Justice Davis said.

“The question is why and the only thing that has been offered so far is that he was frustrated…”

Earlier in the hearing, Justice Davis said: “An act like this against a 10-week-old child based upon frustration for not being able to move to be with one’s girlfriend is far from attractive…”

Randall was arrested in 2017 following an 18-month investigation into the baby’s death.

Since Kye’s death in 2014, Randall maintained the lie that the baby’s injuries were caused by CPR gone wrong, despite having a first aid certificate and being a sworn policeman.

“This appears to be a very late plea following a period of three-and-a-half years of lies…” Justice Davis said.

During a Triple-0 call that was today played to the court, Randall claimed the boy had gone limp and he had found him barely conscious and “very, very pale”.

Distressed, Randall could be heard saying the baby was “lifeless” and “not breathing”.

“He’s obviously distraught by that stage over the enormity of what he’s done,” Justice Davis observed.

Randall later told his Ms Chapman their baby boy “didn’t stand a chance” when he, a 115kg man, was administering CPR on the day he died.

The crown allege Randall intended to punch the child, but do not suggest Randall intended to cause the death of the baby.

Despite the crown’s case that the frustration that lead to the death of the child was born out of Randall’s “fixation” on a transfer to Hervey Bay, defence barrister David Brustman QC, instructed by Howden Saggers Lawyers, told the court the father just “lost it”.

Mr Brustman said the relationship between the the woman he was having the affair with had dissolved and there was no “nexus” between her and his desire to move to the area.

“There are some cases where we just don’t know (why),” he said.

“Some people just lose it for reasons we just don’t know.

“… but for ... this day, the defendant was pretty much an exemplary father…”