A father-of-three who tortured and killed his baby boy could released after just 10 years behind bars, sparking outrage from the toddler’s grieving relatives.
Shane Akehurst threw his 21-month-old son Corby so hard against a wall that the baby’s brain stem was severed.
In March 2015, Akehurst threw Corby’s tiny body against the wooden frame of a bed in their isolated rural property in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
The impact on the boy’s head was so forceful it caused whiplash and his eyes to bleed internally.
Despite the best efforts of paramedics and doctors, Corby was declared brain dead two days later and his life support system was switched off.
Though he was initially charged with murder, Akehurst in 2019 pleaded guilty to manslaughter and torture and was sentenced to 12 years and six months behind bars.
But with time already served, Akehurst’s non-parole period of 10 years will be up early next year, and could be released.
As it’s within six months of his minimum sentence, the state parole board has told Corby’s shattered family that Akehurst can now begin the application process to walk free.
‘He should have got life,’ Corby’s furious maternal aunt Tanya Jeffrey told the Courier-Mail.
‘He gets a second chance at life – Corby never did.’
An autopsy found Corby had 81 separate injuries.
They included crushed ribs that were weeks old, a missing fingernail and extensive facial injuries.
Akehurst told investigators he felt Corby’s ribs ‘pop’ after he gave him ‘a really good squeeze’.
The boy’s penis and scrotum were also bruised and the skin broken, which was likely to have been caused by forceful pinching, the court heard during sentencing submissions.
The father-of-three told police he had anger issues that sometimes caused him to lose control.
He also admitted, on multiple occasions, punching Corby’s head when the boy woke and called out to his mother during the night.
Ms Jeffrey did not agree with Akehurst’s charges being reduced to manslaughter and torture and said he should have faced a jury charged with murder.
‘I had to give up for a little bit because the system was making me wild,’ she said.
‘Where is our justice system?’
Ms Jeffrey has contacted the The Liberal National Party’s police spokesman Dan Purdie, a former Child Protection detective who led the team that investigated Corby’s death.
Mr Purdie has written to the parole board requesting for Corby’s family to receive updates if Akehurst applies for release.
‘It was a traumatic crime. The team I worked with worked diligently and around the clock to secure a conviction for an offender who had gone to some lengths to cover up his crime,’ Mr Purdie told the Courier-Mail.
He and Detective Senior Constable Stacey Marshall sat with Akehurst in a waiting room at the Queensland Children’s Hospital for several hours and finally got a confession from him after he had tried to cover his tracks.
When the arrest team took Akehurst into the Brisbane watch house, they had been working for 48 hours straight.
‘These are the sort of crimes where there are never any witnesses, the offender never brags,’ he said.