A MOTHER accused of the manslaughter of her two-year-old son said the last time she saw him alive, he was playing with his toys in the bath. Riley Lewis was found floating face down in the bath at his home in Orchard Park Road, Orchard Park, Hull, on January 4 last year.
He had drowned and was pronounced dead at Hull Royal Infirmary at 12.37am the following day.
Riley's mother Kerry Abel, 38, was initially arrested at the hospital on suspicion of his murder, but was charged with manslaughter on November 29.
Sheffield Crown Court heard her answer to the charge was: "He was my son. How do you think I feel? This is wrong, this is."
In police interviews, Miss Abel said although she bathed Riley every day, she had planned to give him a wash the night he died but put him in the bath because that was what he wanted and he "loved water".
She said she left the downstairs bathroom briefly to get some toys he was asking for from upstairs – "two guns and a couple of figures".
"He was just playing with them, throwing them at me," she said.
Miss Abel said she thought she was playing with Riley for about ten minutes before she "passed out".
She said she came round on the floor, with her head against the radiator, and with a "bump" on her head and a pain in her neck.
She said: "The next thing, all I can remember is I woke up.
"As I've got up my head is starting to hurt and my neck, and as I looked in the bath it's full to the rim and he was face down. As I've come round, that's when I saw him.
"So I picked him up, gets him out, wraps him in a big wet towel and I tried to resuscitate him."
Richard Wright QC, prosecuting, told the jury when opening the trial that a "far more likely scenario" was that Miss Abel "put Riley in the bath and, affected by drugs, fell asleep".
Miss Abel, a former heroin addict, admitted after Riley's death that she had recently taking three drugs – the heroin substitute methadone, which was prescribed by her doctor, tramadol, and a painkiller.
Tests of her blood and urine found she had taken six more – diazepam, temazepam, nitrazepam, heroin, cocaine, and cannabis. The painkiller was found to be pregabalin.
Toxicologist Denise Stanworth told the jury that the heroin, cocaine, and cannabis were unlikely to have affected her at the time because of when they had been taken, or the size of the doses.
But she said the other drugs – a mixture of sedatives and sleeping tablets – would have enhanced each other when taken together.
The combination could explain her falling asleep, Mrs Stanworth said.
Riley had suffered horrific burns in the scalding water and had a temperature of 41C after death.
Some of the details of his injuries are too distressing to report.
Before the trial got under way, Mr Justice Coulson told the jury of eight women and four men they could be excused serving on the jury if they had been affected by infant death. None of them opted to leave.
The trial will continue on Monday.
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