{"id":33002,"date":"2025-07-15T13:29:28","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T13:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/grandparents-guilty-of-murdering-toddler-ethan-ives-griffiths\/"},"modified":"2025-07-15T13:29:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T13:29:28","slug":"grandparents-guilty-of-murdering-toddler-ethan-ives-griffiths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/grandparents-guilty-of-murdering-toddler-ethan-ives-griffiths\/","title":{"rendered":"Grandparents guilty of murdering toddler Ethan Ives-Griffiths"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Chris Dearden<\/span><\/p>\n

BBC News<\/span><\/p>\n

Reporting from<\/svg>Mold Crown Court<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"FamilyFamily photo<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Ethan Ives-Griffiths’ grandparents Michael and Kerry Ives have been found guilty of murdering him<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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A grandfather and grandmother have been found guilty of murdering their two-year-old grandson. <\/p>\n

Ethan Ives-Griffiths, two, died on 16 August 2021 after suffering a “catastrophic” head injury at his grandparents’ home in Garden City, Flintshire.<\/p>\n

Ethan’s grandfather Michael Ives, 47, and grandmother Kerry Ives, 46, were both convicted of murder after a trial at Mold Crown Court.<\/p>\n

Ethan’s mother Shannon Ives, 28, from Mold, was also found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child and cruelty to a child.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"NorthNorth Wales Police<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Michael and Kerry Ives were told to expect life sentences for murdering their grandson<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Michael and Kerry Ives have also been found guilty of cruelty to a child.<\/p>\n

The trio will all be sentenced on 3 October.<\/p>\n

The court heard Ethan was dangerously dehydrated and severely underweight, with 40 visible bruises or marks, when he collapsed with a catastrophic head injury at his grandparents’ home on the evening of 14 August 2021.<\/p>\n

Shannon Ives had been staying with her son at her parents’ home<\/a> in Garden City when the court heard he was “targeted for abuse and subjected to casual cruelty”.<\/p>\n

As the verdicts were announced, Shannon and Kerry Ives stared ahead while Michael Ives rested his head on his left hand while staring in front of him.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Michael and Kerry Ives, Judge Mr Justice Griffiths said there was only “one sentence for murder and that is life imprisonment”.<\/p>\n

“I have to consider the minimum term you must serve before you can be considered for release on licence, which is likely to be many years from now,” he said. <\/p>\n

“In the case of Shannon Ives, a substantial prison sentence is almost certain, and the sentence is very unlikely to be anything other than immediate custody.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Det Supt Chris Bell of North Wales Police said the trio held positions of responsibility and should have shown Ethan love, care and protection.<\/p>\n

“Instead, Michael caused distress, pain and misery to his grandson before brutally taking his life nearly four years ago in August 2021,” he said. <\/p>\n

“Kerry and Shannon both watched and took no action as the abuse unfolded in the home they all shared.” <\/p>\n

Mr Bell said their behaviour was “beyond comprehension” and it was “impossible to imagine the terror” Ethan would have felt in suffering the horrific injuries he endured in the seven-week period he lived with his parents. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During a seven-week trial, the jury heard a 13-minute 999 call made by Kerry Ives to the ambulance service on the evening of 14 August, saying Ethan had collapsed while watching television.<\/p>\n

Michael Ives is heard saying “he looks like he’s asleep”. The call ended when paramedics arrived at the house.<\/p>\n

Ethan was then taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, where “multiple areas of bruises” were noted on his body. <\/p>\n

Ethan was pronounced dead on 16 August.<\/p>\n

The jury was also shown CCTV installed in the Ives’ garden which showed Ethan apparently struggling for balance while other children bounced around him. <\/p>\n

In several clips, he was seen lying on his side and, despite getting to his feet, was seen falling repeatedly.<\/p>\n

At one point, his mother Shannon climbed on the trampoline and bounced, causing Ethan to fall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"NorthNorth Wales Police<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Shannon Ives was staying with her son Ethan at her parents’ home in Garden City when he was murdered<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The court heard Ethan had been placed on the child protection register, requiring him to be seen every 10 days.<\/p>\n

But when Shannon Ives last saw her social worker, on 5 August, she spoke to him on the doorstep and told him Ethan was having a nap.<\/p>\n

No-one answered the door when social worker Michael Cornish went to visit in the days before Ethan’s death, and a scheduled appointment with a health visitor on 13 August was cancelled.<\/p>\n

Michael and Kerry Ives, originally from Wolverhampton, accused their daughter of hitting Ethan, with Michael Ives telling the jury his daughter was “quick-tempered” and would slap Ethan a couple of times a day.<\/p>\n

But Shannon Ives told the court her parents were “horrible” and abused her as a child.<\/p>\n

The court heard Ethan was made to stand with his hands on his head as a punishment when he misbehaved.<\/p>\n

CCTV footage from 4 August showed Michael Ives carrying his grandson by the top of his arm in a way which Caroline Rees KC, prosecuting, described as “as though Ethan was just a bag of rubbish to be slung out”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Dearden BBC News Reporting fromMold Crown Court Family photo Ethan Ives-Griffiths’ grandparents Michael and Kerry Ives have been found guilty of murdering him A grandfather and grandmother have been found guilty of murdering their two-year-old grandson. Ethan Ives-Griffiths, two, died on 16 August 2021 after suffering a “catastrophic” head injury at his grandparents’ home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[10759,10983,1217,10760,1751,5786],"class_list":["post-33002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wales","tag-ethan","tag-grandparents","tag-guilty","tag-ivesgriffiths","tag-murdering","tag-toddler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33004,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33002\/revisions\/33004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}