JURORS will soon be deciding if Cirencester father Stephen Ward is guilty of the manslaughter of his baby son, Jordan.

Ward, 25, now living in Lawnside in Nailsworth, denies the manslaughter of the nine-month-old, who died from ‘catastrophic’ injuries at their former home in Burge Court, Cirencester on June 10, 2014.

A jury of nine men and three women is expected to be sent out to consider its verdict today.

Prosecutor Rosaleen Collins and defence lawyer Michael Wood summed up the case to jurors at Bristol Crown Court yesterday.

Miss Collins said that since the death of baby Jordan, Ward had “set about a series of cover-ups and lies.”

She told jurors: “The account he gave to people was different to the embellished account he gave to police 13 months later.

“He knows he shook that baby and he is trying to hide it.

“I suggest he has been lying repeatedly. In a fit of temper and a fit of frustration, and unable to control his temper, he shook that baby.”

She explained: “Jordan would not feed with the defendant and that made that him angry. He seemed to take it personally.

“Parents and carers experience frustration sometimes, but there is a world of difference between those who find it stressful and those who cross the line into abuse.”

With regards to Ward’s claim that he was trying to save his son from choking, Miss Collins said: “Jordan was not choking. There was nothing in his airways.

“Why would (Ward) get into such a panic if that was all it was,” she said explaining that Ward would have dealt with Jordan gagging and choking at other textured foods when he was younger.

She said that even in trying to save a child from choking, “you do not start vigorously shaking the child with a force of a traffic accident.

“He now agrees that he must have shaken the baby.

“Evidence suggests that it has to be very severe shaking, so severe that anyone would realise it was wholly inappropriate. It was a force that would be comparable to a high speed road accident.”

Defending Ward, Michael Wood told jurors that he “was always a man of good character”.

He said that Ward had “never ever been violent or even threatening” to Jordan’s mother Paula Watts and that Paula had never seen any violence towards Jordan.

And although Paula claimed to have seen bruises on Jordan, he said, no one else, including the health visitor who saw Jordan twice a week, noticed them.

He added that if she had concerns that Ward had slapped Jordan, she would not have left him alone with the nine-month-old baby a month later.

Addressing Ward’s inability to recount events close to his son’s death in detail, he said: “Your baby is lifeless, what do you do? Remember everything that happened? You look for help.”

He referred to Ward’s 999-call at the time of the incident which had been played to the jury. He asked jurors: “Is Stephen Ward a consummate actor?

“He goes, in one minute, from being a person who has summoned Jordan’s death to a man who makes that call crying, pleading, desperate for his baby to wake up.”

Regarding the alleged shaking, Mr Wood said: “The degree of force required is controversial. It is a grey area by which there is no certainty as to the degree of force or the number of shakes.”

He said that Professor Peter Fleming’s idea that the shake was equivalent to the force of a high speed car crash was “in one end of the spectrum”.

He reminded jurors that Dr Alan Sprigg and Dr Daniel Du Plessis both agreed the incident could have lasted a second and could have been a single forceful shake.

Mr Wood concluded that Ward did not intend to cause serious harm: “He knows he is responsible for Jordan’s death but did not do any more than necessary to stop Jordan choking.”

He said that though Ward did not remember shaking Jordan, “he now knows he must have done that in a manner of panic.

“If you knew something you did in a panic killed someone, would you want to admit it?”

The jury were given a guide of questions to consider when they decide on a verdict.

The questions include whether or not Ward shook Jordan, whether such contact was deliberate, whether such contact was the cause of Jordan’s death, whether there was more force used than was generally acceptable, and whether such contact was dangerous.

The trial continues.