Murder of Star Hobson

Star Hobson was born on 19 May 2019 to Frankie Smith and Jordan Hobson. Smith was a teenage mother, a month short of her 18th birthday at the time of Star's birth. A clinical psychologist later found Smith to have a low IQ of 70 and to be highly compliant and subservient. Star's parents separated in November 2019, and Smith subsequently began a relationship with Savannah Brockhill, a club bouncer.

Concerns about Star's welfare were raised repeatedly in the months before her death. On 27 January 2020, a friend of Smith's made a referral to social services, and a social worker visited the child twice. In February, Brockhill sent a video to Smith's sister in which she speculated Smith may have been unfaithful and described herself as a "psycho" who would "stab someone tonight." After Smith obtained her own flat around the start of the UK's COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, Brockhill was violent toward Smith on at least two occasions that month and told an acquaintance she had considered driving them both off a cliff. Social services closed the case around this time but reopened it in May after Star's grandmother reported that Brockhill had been using wrestling moves to restrain the toddler while Smith did not intervene. Further referrals, including one from Star's father, followed in June, leading to a medical examination, but the case was closed again in July. It was briefly reopened after a referral from Star's grandfather but closed once bruising was attributed to a fall. Later that month, CCTV footage recorded Brockhill assaulting the child at her workplace, a recycling plant, and showed Smith dragging an unwell-looking Star through town on reins; by this time Star was physically unable to walk due to a broken leg.

On 22 September 2020, while playing with two other children at home, Star was severely assaulted. The later legal verdict described the fatal injury as resulting from a "fatal punch or kick" delivered with "the force of a car crash." Fifteen minutes before calling 999, the couple made internet searches related to treating shock in babies. The assault to Star's abdomen damaged her internal organs, rupturing her vena cava and causing fatal internal bleeding. She also had older injuries, including a fractured ankle and skull.

On 14 December 2021, at Bradford Crown Court, Savannah Brockhill was convicted of murdering Star Hobson, and Frankie Smith was found guilty of causing or allowing her death. Brockhill was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years. Smith was initially sentenced to eight years, later increased to 12 years by the Court of Appeal. The trial occurred around the same time as that concerning the killing of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, another young child abused and killed by a parent's partner; commentators noted parallels between the two cases, including that both children were known to authorities, had extended family who attempted to intervene, and were killed during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was said to have made it easier to conceal their worsening conditions.