Marvyn Iheanacho, 39, was found guilty of murdering little Alex Malcolm in a fit of rage, following a two week trial at Woolwich Crown Court.
Convicted robber Iheanacho, flew into a rage and attacked his girlfriend’s son Alex Malcolm in Mountsfield Park in Hither Green, South East London.
Witnesses heard a child’s fearful voice saying ‘sorry’, loud banging and a man screaming about the loss of a shoe, Woolwich Crown Court was told.
Pictures were released today of his shoes and the red coat he was wearing on the day. Pathologists described his injuries as the type seen in a road traffic collision.
Iheanacho, from Hounslow, West London, who was in a relationship with Alex’s mother Lilya Breha, is now facing a life sentence after he was found guilty of murder.
This afternoon, the jury of seven men and five women returned a unanimous guilty verdict. Ms Breha nodded as the verdict was announced and quietly wept in court.
She said Alex had been her ‘purpose for living’ and she had been lying next to him in hospital with her hand on his chest, feeling ‘every single one of his final heartbeats’.
Ms Breha said in a statement: ‘Alex was so small but he was my strength and my purpose for living. The hardest thing I have ever had to hear was that my child died.
‘I remember it like it was yesterday. Lying next to him in a hospital and praying that everything would be fine, that he will open his eyes.
‘I didn’t even get to tell him I love him. All I got was to put my hand on his chest and feel every single one of his final heartbeats.’
Iheanacho earlier claimed he had only tried to slap his stepson awake and told the mother what had happened to her son ‘made him realise how much he loved her’.
The killer, whose appalling record of violence took 15 minutes to read to the jury, started seeing Ms Breha while he was in jail for another assault on a woman.
Iheanacho has a string of previous convictions for violent offences, including attacks on ex-partners and robbery. Judge Mark Dennis QC deferred sentence until Tuesday.
Iheanacho, who was known to Alex as ‘Daddy Mills’, admitted beating the boy before, in a note in his diary which read: ‘Do I really love Alex, five years old small cute lil boy.
‘Who want nothing more, than daddy mills to love him protect him but most of all keep him from harm – even though I had to beat him just now for sicking up in the cab – why why why I say – so the answer is yes yes yes I love him and like with all my heart but may not enough.’
Alex’s head, neck, and body were covered with bruises after the attack on November 20 last year.
The little boy had been happily chasing foxes as it became dark and his shoe slipped from his foot.
Witness Sarah Strugnell remembered Alex as ‘a beautiful boy with long eyelashes’ being asked: ‘Where are your shoes?’
Iheanacho was then heard to say: ‘You are f***ing joking’ and started punching Alex with such sickening force that the witness thought she could hear ‘sparring’
Alex sobbed ‘I’m sorry’ repeatedly but Iheanacho did not stop until the boy was unconscious.
Working in an adjacent yard, Miss Strugnell and her partner Gavin Richardson saw their metal fence shake violently prompting their dogs to bark, startling Iheanacho.
Ms Breha phoned him shortly after the crashing stopped, and was told Alex had lost his shoe – but he hung up when she asked to speak to the boy.
He then brought Alex back into the park, laying him on a bench where he was spotted by another couple walking their dog, who noticed the boy’s arm ‘dangling’ off the bench.
Iheanacho asked Ms Breha to meet him at the front door as he brought Alex home.
‘I saw him holding Alex like a baby,’ she said. ‘He had no shoe and I just started screaming the moment I saw Alex.’
Ms Breha described how he then attacked her when she tried to call an ambulance. She said she started screaming when she saw Alex was ‘unconscious and his face was disgusting’.
The mother was left to secretly Google ‘When to call a doctor after child hits head’, as Iheanacho calmly smoked a cigarette and denied Alex treatment for two hours.
She told the court that she kept on shouting at Iheanacho: ‘What have you done to my son? What happened to him?’
Ms Breha said Iheanacho, whom she had started dating in June, and thought had been a good father figure to her son, hit her with the ‘hardest punch I had in my life’.
He grabbed her shoulder, kneeing her in the chest and grabbed her around he throat. ‘I couldn’t breathe in and I couldn’t breathe out and there was just these few seconds left and I knew I wouldn’t last,’ she added.
She told the jury that he ‘tried to strangle me, pretty much his intention was to try kill me, is all I can say’.
But she grabbed the phone after noticing her son was getting cold, his face had turned blue and he had stopped breathing.
Doctors at Lewisham Hospital tried to resuscitate Alex, but a CT scan revealed he was suffering from severe brain swelling.
He was transferred to King’s College Hospital before being pronounced dead on November 22 after an unsuccessful operation. A post-mortem revealed 22 separate areas of bruising and an internal abdominal impact injury.
Iheanacho gave several different accounts of how the horrific injuries were caused, including that Alex fell off a climbing frame, which were all rejected by the jury.
Eleanor Laws QC, prosecuting, told jurors: ‘Since the attack he has done his best to avoid being held accountable for those injuries.’
A Year One pupil, Alex was popular at the Archbishop Sumner Church of England Primary School in Kennington, and had appeared as an angel in the nativity play.
Detective Chief Inspector Tony Lynes said outside court: ‘We and the family are very pleased with the outcome today and the verdict of the jury, we thank them for that.
‘Marvin Iheanacho was a man trusted with the care of Alex Malcolm, who was only five. He violently attacked him because the boy lost his shoe in a dark park.
‘He then proceeded to deny Alex the medical care he so obviously required. Lilya, Leroy and the family conducted themselves with great dignity and restraint.
‘Having just spoke to them they are pleased with the outcome although they will live with the loss of Alex for the rest of their lives.
‘They are relieved, what they wanted was justice, it’s not going to bring Alex back but it goes some way to restoring faith in the justice system.’
‘Afterwards Iheanacho came up with various stories to try to cover his tracks, insisted his girlfriend lie for him and attacked her when she tried to get medical help for her unconscious son.
‘It is no surprise the jury easily saw through his stories and while nothing can bring Alex back, I hope Iheanacho’s conviction today provides his mother and father and their families with some comfort.’
Rob Davis from the Crown Prosecution Service said of Iheanacho: ‘His actions that day tragically ended a young boy’s life, and deprived a mother of her son.
‘His efforts to cover up what really happened, first to Alex’s mother by claiming Alex had simply fainted and hit his head, then by lying and repeatedly changing his story to police, show his greatest concern was for himself.
‘Our thoughts go to Alex’s mother and family and we hope today’s conviction brings them some sense of justice.’
And an NSPCC spokesman told MailOnline: ‘Alex suffered an appalling assault at the hands of someone who should have been caring for him.
‘Instead of protecting this little boy, Iheanacho violently robbed him of the chance to live a long and happy life and fabricated a number of reasons to conceal the horrific attack.
‘Babies and young children are entirely dependent on those who care for them and we all have a duty to look out for their welfare.’
Iheanacho carried out six different attacks on five ex-partners stretching back to 1998, all triggered by trivial acts.
He struck a jeweller with a hammer and a wooden chair when raiding a jewellers in 2001.
The manager had tried to fend him away with a the chair Iheanacho and repeatedly smashed him over the head with it.
In 2010 Iheanacho attacked a 13 year-old boy, punching and kicking him in the head as he tried to protect his mother from the attacke
In 2012 he knocked an ex-girlfriend unconscious after she refused to lend him his phone, with her requiring surgery to fix her jaw.
A year later he throttled his new partner when she told him he could have a duplicate of son’s birth certificate instead of the original.
Iheanacho had once cheated death when a gunman shot him in the chest in Brixton in 2002.
Police arrested an 18-year-old for the shooting but the prosecution could not prove he was the gunman and later offered no evidence at the Old Bailey.
