The mother of a boy who was seven months old when he drowned in the bathtub while she was using her phone to play games was sentenced to seven years in prison for manslaughter.
Charlie Goodall who was seven months old at the time died in February 2022 after falling from his recently installed seat inside the bathtub.
Prosecutors at Teesside Crown Court assert that 31-year-old mother Danielle Massey ignored Charlie for up to 26 minutes while playing games and even falling asleep after she put him in the tub and claimed to have left him alone briefly while she ran to get a fresh towel.
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In the tub, Massey discovered Charlie unconscious and called for assistance.
He was taken by air to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle from West Chilton Terrace in County Durham.
Charlie didn’t make it out alive.
The court heard Massey was arrested and later told a police officer: “It’s all my fault. I k!lled my baby.”
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Mr Justice Goss said: “(The defendant has given) various changing, inconsistent and implausible accounts of what happened in that interval to try and conceal the truth, which is that she had not properly prepared for the bathing of Charlie and was doing what she wanted to do, engaging in various activities on her phone including using a gaming app, confident in the belief Charlie was in his chair, in the bath.
“I reject her account of being exhausted and closing her eyes, I am sure she was active and awake.”
Although the mother was on trial at Teesside Crown Court to challenge the basis of her guilty plea she had already admitted to manslaughter and possessing cannabis on the day Charlie died.
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Massey said that her gross negligence is restricted to not playing games on her phone and using an unsuitable bath seat.
Richard Wright KC said: “The prosecution case is that defendant left her child unattended for a long period so that he fell out of his unsafe bath seat and drowned which would not have happened if he had been properly supervised as he should have been at the time.
“The defence cast the issue of whether the Crown can prove that the defendant was playing a game on her phone for 26 minutes during which time her son drowned.”
Describing what unfolded, she said: “I went to pick up the towel but realised I didn’t have one in the bathroom so at that point that’s when I decided I had to go get a towel. I was only planning on going to the dining table.
“At that point, I left the bathroom thinking I was only going to be a minute. I realised I took all the towels upstairs because the cat had kittens so I ran upstairs to see if I could find any clean towels.”
She continued: “I closed my eyes during the breathing techniques. I’m not 100% if I fell asleep, I was exhausted.”
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Recalling what happened next, she said: “I walked in and I saw him laid there and I picked him up and started CPR.”
When quizzed why by Mr Sharpe she replied: “My head was all over the place. I was an emotional wreck because I had no idea if my son was alive or de@d at this point.”
