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Grandparents who beat their two-year-old grandson to death have been jailed for life.
Michael Ives, 48, and his wife Kerry Ives, 46, were sentenced at Mold Crown Court with minimum terms of 23 years and 17 years respectively for the murder of little Ethan Ives-Griffiths.
Ethan's mother Shannon Ives was also jailed for 12 years for causing or allowing his death and child cruelty.
The toddler weighed just 10 kilograms and had sustained more than 40 injuries to his body, as well as catastrophic brain trauma, when he died on August 16, 2021.
He had been staying at his maternal grandparents' house in Flintshire, North Wales, alongside his mother.
A post-mortem revealed 'painfully thin' Ethan was so dehydrated and malnourished at the time of his death he would have passed away within ten days, had he not been fatally injured.
He suffered a catastrophic head injury before collapsing while his mother Shannon was upstairs on the phone.
In his sentencing remarks at Mold Crown Court today, Mr Justice Griffiths told Michael Ives, Kerry Ives and Shannon Ives that Ethan 'was a brave and resilient boy with a strong character'.
The judge said: 'Ethan Ives-Griffiths was a two-year-old with an independent spirit. His mother and his grandparents hit him, but when they did, he was defiant and even laughed.
'Even though he was only a toddler, he was a brave and resilient boy with a strong character.
'He already had qualities which in an adult could make for greatness, but the people hitting him didn't like the little boy standing up for himself. They decided to break him.
'After a horrifying escalation of cruelty and violence over a couple of months, he was murdered.
'All the hopes and promise of the life he should have had were taken from him.
'You, his grandparents, Michael and Kerry Ives, murdered him, and you, his mother, Shannon Ives, allowed that death for those terrible crimes against your own flesh and blood.'
Distressing video footage recorded at the home showed how Ethan's grandfather callously lifted him across the ground by one arm like 'a bag of rubbish' in the days before his death.
Filmed just ten days before he passed away on August 16, the video showed him walking with a knock-kneed gait and falling over, barely able to hold up his own head, as he was bounced on a trampoline by older children in the scruffy back garden of his grandparents' home.
His grandfather was seen spraying Ethan with a hose and seeming to encourage another child to punch him.
Another video showed Ives carrying Ethan in a similar manner and placing him in the back of a car, before appearing to punch him twice in the stomach.
A post-mortem found more than 40 visible injuries on his tiny frame, including fingerprint-shaped marks to his face, bruising on his arms, legs and chest, a chipped tooth and tears to his mouth and lip, which had a large chunk missing.
Other more serious internal injuries, however, including bleeding in his abdomen and brain, most likely caused by shaking, were the ultimate cause of his death.