Teens quizzed after baby’s ‘murder’ at tot unit

A six-week-old baby whose death is being treated by police as murder died at a unit for young mothers and their children, according to neighbours.

Officers and paramedics were called to Defender Road in Southampton, Hampshire, at 5.05am on Sunday, after the baby was taken ill.

He was taken to hospital, where he later died.

A 16-year-old boy and an 18-yearold woman have been arrested in connection with the death, and are in custody for questioning.

Local resident Ian Fussel said: “My friend who lives in a flat heard the baby crying at night. It’s not nice at all. “It’s terrible, horrible, disgusting.” He added: “It’s a mother and baby unit, teenage kids live there and there used to be staff there at night, but they stopped that.”

Mr Fussel said people staying at the property were known locally to have smoked drugs inside before and the fire service had been called out on at least one occasion because of the fumes.

He said: “It’s not the first time something like that has happened there. People who live round here knew there would be trouble when they put the place here and there has been.

“It’s been evacuated by firefighters once because they were smoking things and the fumes were harming the babies. None of this would have happened if they had staff in there at night.”

Mr Fussel said he believed that in the past boyfriends were not allowed to stay but the rules had changed.

A Hampshire Police spokesman confirmed that the pair had been arrested on suspicion of murder.