A thug who left a baby girl badly brain damaged after getting “stressed” playing computer games has been jailed.
Dale Thomson violently shook the nine-month-old child at a flat in Dundee in April this year after losing his temper over an Xbox game.
The High Court in Glasgow heard the child will suffer “lifelong implications” affecting her movement, learning, speech and vision.
Thomson, 27, turned on the baby having years earlier lashed out at a one-month-old boy because he woke up during the night.
He pleaded guilty to attacking the child to her severe injury, permanent impairment and danger of her life on April 1.
Prosecutor Paul Kearney said: “The injury . . . was severe. It will have lifelong implications impacting on her movement, learning, speech and vision.”
The court heard the child continues to need “high levels of care” and attends a specialist unit at hospital every day.
Thomson also admitted assaulting a baby boy at a flat in Dundee while staying with the child’s mum in October 2010.
The child woke up crying early one morning – before a raging Thomson grabbed him from the seat he was in.
He yelled: “Do you want to go to ******* sleep. I don’t know what’s ******* wrong with you.”
Judge Lord Burns jailed Thomson for four years and eight months, and ordered him to be supervised for three years on his release.
Passing sentence he told him: “You pleaded guilty to two charges of assaulting very young children, separated by about eight years.
“You knew yourself to be somebody who could lose control of his temper.” He added: “Your self-awareness of your own anger management problem seems to me to be an aggravating factor here.
“You accept you deliberately assaulted this child in April and violently shook her causing her head to move rapidly back and forth in such a way a way that could have killed her.”
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