Mum of tragic boy who was allegedly crushed by a car seat tells jurors she was ‘scared’ of her boyfriend

Left, Adrian Hoare and right, Alfie Lamb (Family handout/PA Wire)

Adrian Hoare, 23, is accused of doing nothing when Stephen Waterson, 25, allegedly squashed her son Alfie Lamb, three, during a trip in his Audi convertible last February.

Waterson is accused of deliberately moving his seat back because he was annoyed at Alfie’s crying. The prosecution have claimed Waterson lost his temper with Alfie on the journey back to his flat in Croydon, south London.

Giving evidence at the Old Bailey, Hoare said she felt “scared” when her partner was “annoyed or angry”, adding: “You never knew how he was going to react to things.”

The hairdresser told jurors how police had been called after an incident in Gravesend, Kent, the year before Alfie died.

She said she had been at a friend’s house when she heard Waterson had been seeing another woman.

“I asked him over the phone what was going on and we started arguing. He had come down to Gravesend in the car and asked me to go and speak to him.

“I had gone to speak to him and he had said that to me to get in the car. He started driving stupidly and he was shouting at me (that) he did not care if he killed us in the car.

“He was driving at speed and he did not care if there was other cars coming towards him or anything,” she said.

Katy Thorne QC, defending, asked: “When he said he did not care if he killed us, who was us?”

Hoare replied: “I had just found out I was pregnant at the time. He was saying himself, me and the baby. I was scared and I eventually got him to stop the car. He then took me back down to near where my friend’s car was and went back to her house to speak to the police. My friends had been ringing Stephen’s phone trying to get him to take me back to the house and saying they would ring the police if he didn’t.”

Hoare told the court how she met Waterson in 2016 after she moved to Blackpool for a fresh start. Her previous boyfriend was jailed for setting fire to her house in Gravesend, jurors were told.

Hoare and Waterson, of Croydon, south London, have both denied manslaughter and the trial continues.