A teacher accused of abusing and murdering a baby boy he was trying to adopt told hospital medics ‘I f******* killed him’, a court heard.
Jamie Varley, 37, was said to have blurted out the comment after racing into the hospital with 13-month-old Preston Davey limp in his arms.
Jurors were on Tuesday shown CCTV footage of the moment Varley arrived at Blackpool Victoria Hospital’s A&E department on the evening of July 27, 2023.
The footage also showed his boyfriend, John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, following closely behind.
Varley, who was barefoot and wearing a pair of red pyjamas, could be seen holding his head in his hands after he handed the tot over to paramedics.
He was described as being ‘hysterical’ and begging medical staff: ‘Don’t let him die, please don’t let him die.’
One senior medic told Preston Crown Court that Varley was ‘agitated’ and being ‘dramatic’.
He said: ‘I f******* killed him.’
McGowan-Fazakerley, a sales rep, was ‘more calm…but still had a look of terror in his eyes,’ paramedic Simon Crabb said.
Varley, a textiles teacher and head of year at a secondary school, is accused of twice sexually assaulting Preston earlier that day, causing his death.
Jamie Varley was captured on CCTV carrying Preston Davey into Blackpool Victoria Hospital’s A&E department in July 2023
A paramedic carried Preston into the hospital while Varley and his partner John McGowan-Fazakerley followed
Preston Davey pictured by his adopted father, Jamie Varley, the morning after his first sleep over at his new adopted home
Mr Crabb was sitting in an ambulance with a colleague when he and McGowan-Fazakerley ran into the hospital with ‘floppy’ Preston, who was dressed in just a nappy, and immediately went to help.
Mr Crabb said one of the men, understood to be Varley, told him that Preston wasn’t breathing and he could see for himself that he was ‘very poorly’.
The court heard the unit was ‘extremely busy’ and there were no cubicles free to treat the tot, who was in cardiac arrest, so he and nurse Rosanna Briggs placed him on a desk and immediately began trying to resuscitate him.
‘The man in the red top was hysterical,’ Mr Crabb said.
‘I spoke to him and he said, “I only left him for three to four minutes, he was sat in his chair in the bath, I had a shower, he climbs, he climbs.”
‘He also said to me, “Don’t let him die, please don’t let him die.”‘
The jury has been told that Varley claimed Preston had fallen off his bath seat when he nipped away to change into his pyjamas and he returned a few minutes later to find him face down in the bath.
But the prosecution say that a post-mortem did not match this version of events, and a pathologist had concluded that Preston was smothered and died of an ‘acute upper airway obstruction’.
The jury was told that medical staff managed to get Preston’s pulse back momentarily, but he went into cardiac arrest again and after around 45 to 50 minutes of CPR, they realised he could not be saved.
CCTV shows Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley following paramedics as they begin to treat Preston inside the hospital
Former secondary school teacher Jamie Varley, 37, denies the charges against him
Varley’s partner John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, also denies the charges against him
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Doctors went to inform Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley, who were waiting in a family room, nearby.
But, the court heard, Varley refused to accept what had happened.
He ‘ran out of the room in a distressed state’ and was ‘shouting and pleading’ with medics to continue with the CPR, it is claimed.
One doctor, Dr Imran Ali, said in a statement that Varley was ‘touching the baby and begging for him to wake up’.
He said he recalled him saying: ‘I can’t believe this has happened, I won’t accept this, it’s my fault.’
Anaesthetist Dr Wendy Aubrey told the court that both Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley were invited into the room where Preston was being given unsuccessful CPR after medics decided it was time to stop.
‘I recall one dad was quite subdued and stood to my right,’ she said.
‘The other dad was very dramatic, more dramatic than I have seen parents previously – a bit chaotic, he wouldn’t stand still and let people support him. He wouldn’t listen to what was being said.
‘He was initially shouting “dont let him die”. He was saying, “don’t stop”, – I presume he meant resuscitation. He then said: ‘’I f***ing killed him.’’
She said the male, understood to be Varley, then tried to continue giving Preston mouth to mouth and she had to be quite ‘firm’ and tell him to stop.
The jury was also shown an electronic entry in Preston’s medical notes.
It stated that Preston’s ‘family present when we stopped…dad Jamie still tried to give mouth to mouth’.
The notes added: ‘Jamie screaming hysterically…John held hand…Jamie refused.’
Varley denies murder, manslaughter, two counts of assault by penetration, five counts of cruelty to a child, grievous bodily harm, sexual assault of a child, 13 counts of taking indecent photos or videos of a child, one of distributing an indecent photo of a child, to his co-accused, and one of making an indecent photo.
McGowan-Fazakerley denies allowing the death of a child, three counts of child cruelty and one count of the sexual assault of a child.
The trial, expected to last six to eight weeks, continues.
