The family of tragic toddler Star Hobson have hit out at the prison medics who saved her, arguing she should have been left to die after suffering two separate seizures while behind bars.
Savannah Brockhill, 28 was jailed for life after she was found guilty of murdering the 16-month-old during a campaign of abuse at her West Yorkshire home last June.
Self-proclaimed ‘psycho’ Brockhill collapsed twice and suffered cardiac arrest at HMP Styal in Cheshire while on remand for the toddler’s murder just two days before the trial.
She was revived both times by prison medics, who rushed to her aid and performed lifesaving CPR on her.
Now, little Star’s great-grandfather Frank Smith, 68, told the Sun how he wished the medics would have let Brockhill die instead, claiming it was unfair in the wake of the harrowing death of his great-granddaughter.
Brockhill, a self-proclaimed ‘psycho’, regularly beat Smith and – when she continued to attract male attention – threatened to ‘kneecap’ anyone who ‘even looked at her’.
The amateur boxer also began physically abusing Star and went on to beat the defenceless toddler to death in one final act of sickening violence.
Outside Bradford Crown Court Hollie Jones, 18, who babysat for Star and made the first of five referrals to social services, said Smith’s sentence was ‘a joke’.
Frank, 68, was one of five relatives or close family friends who turned whistleblower and raised concerns over the treatment, and bruises that had appeared, on 16-month-old Star.
She was jailed for a minimum of 25 years last week after being given a mandatory life sentence for murdering 16-month-old Star Hobson in a fit of temper.
Brockhill is understood to have discharged herself from hospital against medical advice and returned to the closed category, all female HMP Styal in Cheshire.
The defenceless toddler bled to death after being kicked or punched by Brockhill with ‘massive’ force at home in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in September last year.
Frankie Smith, 20, Star’s mother, will be freed in four years after a judge reduced her sentence to account for the ‘burden’ of knowing she played a significant role in the death of her daughter.
Earlier this week, Star’s family slammed the ‘lenient’ sentences handed out to the pair, as they called on Attorney General to review the case under the unduly lenient sentencing scheme.
And hitting out at medics’ decision to revive Star’s murderer, Mr Smith explained: ‘I wish they had let her die. Star’s injuries were so horrific they couldn’t revive her. And yet, Brockhill is saved. How unfair is that?’
He had earlier said he hoped Star’s killers would ‘rot in jail’ and asked: ‘Is that all Star’s life is worth? Frankie will be out in four years – how is that justice?’
And he reserved his harshest judgement yet for Brockhill, telling reporters that the former bouncer ultimately deserved the death penalty
During the trial, jurors heard that Smith’s family and friends had growing fears about bruising they saw on the little girl in the months before she died and made a series of complaints to social services.
In each case Brockhill and Smith managed to convince social workers that marks on Star were accidental or that the complaints were made maliciously by people who did not like their relationship.
Prosecutors described how the injuries that caused Star’s death involved extensive damage to her abdominal cavity ’caused by a severe and forceful blow or blows, either in the form of punching, stamping or kicking to the abdomen’.
Jurors also heard there were other injuries on her body which meant that ‘in the course of her short life, Star had suffered a number of significant injuries at different times’.
On September 2, Frank alerted social services to a video of Star with bruises on her face.
When they visited her, her mother was said to have been in Scotland. The next day they went again unannounced and found her at home with Brockhill.
During an unannounced social worker visit to their Keighley home on September 15 last year Star was so dazed by the abuse she had suffered she walked into a sofa.
She had bruises on her face and shins but the Bradford City Council worker believed Brockhill’s explanation she’d fallen down the stairs.
In fact she was being ‘choke slammed’, swung by her leg and hit in the face by the twisted couple.
They referred to her as a ‘brat’ and forced her to stand facing the wall for long periods of time during their reign of cruelty.
In total two friends and three relatives – including Star’s own father – had reported them to social services but they were still allowed to keep her.
