A MAN who admits killing his girlfriend's baby suffered a breakdown when his own baby died four years earlier, a court was told yesterday.

Richard Baxter, 39, blamed himself for the death of his baby after a road crash in 1997.

In February last year, Baxter met Paula Moore and her baby Jake. They moved into his Middlesbrough flat three months later.

Miss Moore said that Baxter had a loving and caring relationship with the child until the night last August when she found him shaking Jake violently.

She claimed Baxter hit her in the stomach, causing her to fall and black out. When she came to, Baxter was holding the lifeless baby's body.

Paramedics revived him but he died hours later in Middlesbrough General Hospital from brain damage.

He had been bitten on both cheeks and he had 27 fresh bruises on his body.

Miss Moore said that earlier they had taken Jake to a friend's house where Baxter smoked cannabis and drank lager.

Replying to Aidan Marron, defending, she said that before that night Baxter had been kind towards the youngster.

He enjoyed caring for Jake and acted like a loving and responsible father.

He even persuaded her to change Jake's surname to his.

He was arrested after Jake died in Middlesbrough General Hospital 16 hours after admission.

Baxter had telephoned for an ambulance shortly before 2am and the telephonist thought the caller was drunk.

Baxter told a police officer: "I know I was out of order shaking. I did not mean it."

Prosecutor Roger Thorne said: "On the defendant's own account this is not another loss of control over the crying of a baby, or a substitute father jealous of the baby's natural father.

"The defendant simply was not getting his own way. He did not begin to understand how babies are different from grown-ups and he intended to cause really serious bodily harm to this baby, to teach him a lesson."

Baxter of Hodges House, Central Mews, Middlesbrough, pleaded not guilty to murder on August 29 last year, but the jury were told that he pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

The case continues