The father of murdered toddler Star Hobson has said he will never recover from the ‘callous and cruel way’ in which his ‘precious daughter’ was taken from him.
Jordan Hobson issued a statement after Savannah Brockhill was jailed for life for murdering Star and the youngster’s mother, Frankie Smith, 20, was handed an eight-year sentence for allowing her daughter’s death.
Mr Hobson, who is a university student, split with Smith before she started a toxic relationship with Brockhill, a judge heard earlier this week.
Today, the grieving father said: ‘The horrific death of my beautiful baby daughter has left me devastated and I will never recover from the callous and cruel way in which Star was taken from me.
‘No sentence that a court can impose will ever bring back my precious daughter.
‘I would now request privacy so that I can start to grieve and begin to try and pick up the pieces of my life.’
Brockhill, 28, was told she must serve a minimum of 25 years in prison before she is considered for release by a judge who said Star’s short life was ‘marked by neglect, cruelty and injury’.
Sentencing Brockhill and Smith on Wednesday, the judge said the ‘fatal punch or kick’ to Star inside Smith flat in Keighley, West Yorkshire, caused the toddler to lose half the blood in her body and damaged her internal organs.
She said Star was also found to have suffered two brain injuries, numerous ribs fractures, the fracture and refracture of her leg and a skull fracture.
Star was taken to hospital from the flat where she lived with Smith in Wesley Place, Keighley, on September 22 2020, but her injuries were ‘utterly catastrophic’ and ‘unsurvivable’, prosecutors told the two-month trial.
Speaking in court on Wednesday, Mr Hobson’s father, Bernard, told Mrs Justice Lambert how his son could not bring himself to make a statement himself but said he is ‘heartbroken and haunted by his baby daughter suffering in her little life and her tragic death which didn’t need to happen’.
Bernard Hobson told the judge: ‘What did Star do to deserve that her life, which had just begun, be snuffed out so prematurely?
‘It’s hard to comprehend that a girl that we knew could do something so heinous.’
He said: ‘Star was snatched away, her life had barely started.’
Jordan Hobson’s statements today came just hours after images of Star’s mother Frankie, taken by the long-term partner of her great grandmother – were revealed.
Smiling for the camera as an innocent child, this is the young girl who grew up into a monster who stood by and did nothing while her toddler daughter Star Hobson was murdered.
Frankie Smith is pictured in happier times as she starts an eight-year prison sentence for allowing 16-month-old Star Hobson to die, with her partner Savannah Brockhill, sentenced to a minimum of 25 years for the brutal killing.
The photographs were taken by David Fawcett, 61, the partner of Smith’s great-grandmother Anita Smith, who helped to raise her. He said that he hoped that they might help the family remember her what she was like before she met Brockhill.
Mr Fawcett told MailOnline: ‘I look at these pictures and like to remind myself of the beautiful person Frankie was and not what she became after the relationship with Brockhill started.
‘They tell you what a gentle, innocent girl she was. And we believe that deep down, she is still like that, despite the horrors of what has gone on. We’re planning to send them to Frankie in prison in the hope of getting back the girl that we know, not the one who was convicted of such a horrendous crime.’
