A 22-YEAR-OLD man is due to be sentenced on Thursday afternoon for the manslaughter of his five-week-old daughter.
Andrew Ashurst, of Formby Avenue, Atherton, pleaded guilty to shaking baby Leah Marie Aldridge to death when he appeared in court earlier this month.
He is due to be sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court.
Ashurst had been due to stand trial for murder, but his guilty plea to manslaughter was accepted by the prosecution.
He claimed he did not know how her injuries had occurred, but accepted they had happened while she was in his care.
The court heard that Leah had been suffering from a cold in the week before her death and Ashurt had taken her downstairs to try to settle her.
But when he handed Leah to her 16-year-old mother, Janine Aldridge, in the morning, she was limp and struggling to breathe.
She died at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital in Pendlebury from brain and retinal haemorrhaging on Christmas Day 2002.
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