London: A father who killed his newborn daughter when her crying interrupted his computer game could be out of jail in just 18 months.
Christopher Sellman lost his temper with the baby girl within an hour of being left alone with her for the first time, and "slammed" her against a nappy-changing mat. His 25-day-old daughter, Tiffany Sellman Burdge, suffered heart failure and bleeding to the brain and died in hospital that day.
It later emerged social services had been told by Sellman's own parents that he could pose a risk to the child, but the warnings were ignored.
Two other children in his care had been taken away from him by social services in the past.
On Thursday, the 24-year-old was jailed for five years, but he could be free in less than half that time because he had already served a year in prison while awaiting trial.
Child protection charities have called for Sellman to receive a longer sentence.
An official report into Tiffany's death found it could have been prevented if social workers and health agencies had heeded her grandparents' warnings.
Annoyed
Mr Justice Bean, sentencing, said: "It seems you were playing a computer game and were annoyed when she cried. You picked her up and slammed her down on a padded changing mat. You intended her no harm but you treated her roughly and unlawfully killed her."
The judge said Tiffany was unusually vulnerable because she had suffered a skull fracture at birth, but added: "Any one-month- old baby is tiny, fragile and vulnerable."
His trial at Maidstone Crown Court heard Sellman had invented five accounts about his daughter's death, on November 1, 2008.
It was the first time Sellman's girlfriend Pamela Burdge, had left Tiffany alone with him at the couple's home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Sellman initially claimed the baby had trapped wind and went "floppy" and pale, but then said he had slipped and dropped her, and she had hit her head on a changing table.
He was cleared of murder after the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence he had intended to harm Tiffany. A jury found him guilty of manslaughter.
