A young father who “panicked” after dropping his three-month-old daughter eight years ago and withheld information about the fall has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.Akida Javonne Bradshaw of Sturges, St Thomas on Monday admitted to the offence in connection with the May 2, 2015 death of Akela Bradshaw.The plea was accepted by Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Alliston Seale who said Bradshaw’s actions were “gross negligence”.“Although dropping a baby in an accident is not really an offence, it is the action surrounding the whole scenario – the withholding of pertinent information – that amounted to manslaughter by gross negligence, in that he contributed in some way to his daughter’s demise by not telling persons involved that his child had fallen,” the prosecutor said after outlining the facts of the case before Madam Justice Laurie-Ann Smith-Bovell.Seale told the court that the toddler’s mother left her in the care of Bradshaw, who was 23 years old at the time, at his residence that Saturday morning and went to work. She received a call later that day asking her to go to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and when she got there she was informed that her baby had died.
