A two-month-old baby died after being shaken so violently by his father that the child was left brain dead.

Remari Collins died in August 2020, 11 days after he was rocked by Marcus Carter, 43, when he would not take up residence at his home in Easton, the Bristol Crown Court heard.

Carter, from Walsall, admitted to manslaughter and has been jailed for seven years and eight months.

He was acquitted of murder because the act was a “momentary loss of control”.

In jailing Carter, the Honorable Mrs Justice Hill KC said: “You grossly abused your position of trust.

“Remari was helpless. It was your duty as a parent to protect him.”

The court heard that Carter, of Burns Road in Moxley, had spent August 10, 2020 at the Bristol home he shared with Remari’s mother, Amber Collins.

Ms Collins dropped Carter and a young man at the house with the baby around 22:00 BST to go shopping.

While Remari’s mother was out, the young woman heard Carter say “Remari, Remari, Remari” and then “Oh my God” while she was upstairs.

She ran downstairs and saw him shaking Remari, trying to bring him back to life, the court heard.

In a statement read out to the court, Ms Collins, who was in a relationship with Carter for two years, said she was never able to find out what her son looked like “because his life was stolen from him.”

She said: “A part of me will be with him forever and I will never be whole again.

“I had to listen to my son suffer as he died. It haunts me to think how scared he would have been when Marcus shook him.”

He said he did not yet know exactly what happened on August 10, 2020, but that Carter was responsible for his son’s death.

“You were supposed to be his father Marcus and you loved him and protected him. You shook him to death. Does my son’s face haunt you?”

“What could have happened for someone to shake a baby so hard? I’ll never really know how my baby died. Marcus, you took my son.

“They have robbed him. They have robbed me,” he said.

Bristol Crown Court heard Carter called 999 and attempted CPR after shaking his son.

But then he lied to paramedics and police about how Remari sustained his injuries, the court was told.

In mitigation, Gareth James said that Carter had “lost his self-control” and was “otherwise a reasonable and caring father”.

“It is the act of a parent who has lost control of himself, momentarily, and it was not premeditated,” he added.

He said that Carter had suffered from depressive disorders since Remari’s death.

The judge said it was clear Carter “genuinely mourned his son” but said he had shown no “genuine remorse” as he initially lied about what happened.

Carter will serve two-thirds of his sentence before being released on license for the remainder.