Dad dies after 'slap' game with son goes tragically wrong
Malcolm Callender and his teen son often played what they thought was a harmless game until one evening it took a tragic turn.
The ex-army officer died in April 2019 from blunt force trauma after he fell and hit his head on the ground in Reading, a town in southern England, according to police.
After early reports he was injured in a dispute, with a teen arrested on suspicion of murder, it has been revealed at an inquest he had been playing a game of slaps with his 19-year-old son Ewan.
Each person playing the game of slaps has three goes at hitting their opponent and a judge determines who wins.
According to The Telegraph, the 48-year-old and his son had been at a bar watching football just prior to the tragedy.
After striking his son in the bar, Mr Callender gave him son a “free shot” after they stepped onto the sidewalk.
“I knew exactly what he meant, I get to slap him now,” Ewan told the inquest, according to The Telegraph.
The son added he “wanted to make his dad proud” and struck him so hard he sent his father flying onto the road where he hit his head.
Son’s tragic last words to dad before death
The inquest heard Ewan immediately ran to his father’s side while bystanders and nearby security personnel rushed to assist.
Right before police arrested him, Ewan could be heard screaming, “Wake up Dad! Dad I love you!”.
The Telegraph reports prosecutors dropped charges against Ewan 18 months after he was arrested and assistant coroner for Berkshire, Ian Wade, said the son’s slap was legal “horseplay”.
Mr Callender’s wife, Kathryn Morrison-Callender, told the inquest the father and son would often play games together.
“As a family, we would always be messing about with each other and we would be giving each other quick little digs in the ribs which we called ‘fingers of steel’,” she said.
“Another game we would play was slaps.
“When Euan was about 15-years-old, he and Malcolm would progress to try to slap each other around the face. Malcolm would always be winding him up, saying, ‘you reckon you can take me yet?’.”
She added her husband was a competitive man who would never let his son win.
Father and son engaged in ‘consensual horseplay’
According to The Sun, Ewan told the inquest there was nothing aggressive about the game while his friend Luke Key added the father and son had a strong relationship and would laugh while playing.
During the inquest, Mr Wade would not conclude Mr Callender died due to unlawful killing.
“The law recognises that consent is a legitimate concept in the law of assault and the application of force that is consented to, is not assault,” Mr Wade told the inquest.
“You are also allowed to consent to the application of force in what is a rather Victorian way called horseplay.
“It seems to me that what took place here fulfils the definition of horseplay.”
The Sun reports Mr Wade concluded the pair had engaged in “non-aggressive, not hostile, consensual horseplay”.
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