Teacher Who Continuously Stamped On Heavily Pregnant Ex-girlfriend’s Tummy Jailed For Life

Twenty-one years old Kevin Wilson pounced on his former girlfriend outside her home in south London on 15 June last year after she refused to have an abortion. In a vicious assault, he repeatedly stamped on and kicked her stomach after pushing her to the ground.

Malorie Bantala, a Marks & Spencer employee, had been buying decorations for her baby shower and was returning home when Wilson and a 17-year-old accomplice, both disguised in crash helmets, emerged from bushes and attacked her.

Judge Mark Lucraft QC sentenced Wilson to life and ordered him to serve 16 years, saying this was a “rare case” in which a life sentence was necessary. His accomplice, Tafari Grant, was sentenced to 10 years in custody with a further four on licence.

“This was a cowardly, vile and callous attack,” the judge told them. “The assault was premeditated and involved planning, it was sustained and involved repeated kicks and stamps to the midriff.

“There were two victims of the attack, a young pregnant woman and her unborn child. You, Wilson, were the father of the unborn child and as such had a responsibility to ensure the continued wellbeing of mother and baby.”

During the trial the jury heard how family and neighbours had rushed to help Bantala as she lay curled up in the street with life-threatening injuries, unable to feel her baby moving inside her. When emergency services arrived, she told police her unborn child’s father was responsible, saying: “He doesn’t want the baby.”

After the attack Bantala was rushed to King’s College hospital but her unborn baby boy could not be saved and was stillborn by emergency C-section.

She needed life-saving surgery to control catastrophic bleeding from a major artery and suffered fractures to her right hand as she tried to shield her stomach from her attackers.

Bantala and Wilson met in the summer of 2011, before their first term at Bedfordshire University in Luton. They embarked on a relationship but it fizzled out in the middle of their first year, although they remained friendly.

They got back together in summer 2014 during a trip to Ibiza to celebrate the end of university and the baby was conceived in November that year.

The following month, she phoned Wilson to say she was pregnant and he reacted by saying he was not ready to be a father.

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When she told him she had decided to keep the baby, he cut her off but rang back to ask: “Why are you doing this to me?” He threatened to commit suicide if she went ahead with the pregnancy.

Bantala, who was in court to witness the sentencing, said in a victim impact statement she hated being referred to as the victim, as the real victim was her son Joel.

She wrote: “Joel never got to meet me properly, never know how much I love him. I will never get to see him smile, watch him get his first tooth or to take his first steps.

“These are only some of the things that I envisioned in my life with Joel, and that was taken away from me in a split second. The moment Joel died inside me I lost everything, literally. Life as I knew it no longer made sense.”

She also recounted the trauma of her baby’s funeral: “The thought of burying him was unbearable and when I had to do it that was the worst day of my life.”

A postmortem examination of the foetus found that if it had not been for the assault, there was no reason why he would not have been born alive. A DNA test confirmed Wilson was the father.

At the time of the attack, Bantala, then 21, lived with her mother and sister in Peckham, while Wilson lived with his mother, stepfather and brothers on the Longfield estate in Bermondsey.

Det Ch Insp Rob Pack, of the homicide and major crime command, described the case as “truly shocking”. “Shocking that a man would plan and carry out such a violent and abhorrent attack with the sole intention of destroying the life he had helped create. Also, shocking that any person would help him in committing this crime,” he said.

“Selfish and manipulative” Wilson had carefully planned the attack, he said.

“Just as he had manipulated others he similarly sought to thwart the police investigation by laying a false trail to evade justice. It’s clear that the jury saw through Wilson’s account.”

Guardian