Accused ‘smiled as she told of killing her baby boy’
AMOTHER accused of murdering her son smiled as she told a social worker she had killed the seven-week-old baby, a court heard.
Hannah Turtle, 22, was seen by senior social worker Fleur O’Hagan and a colleague before a police interview following the death of baby James in June 2016 over fears she might self-harm.
Giving evidence at Mold Crown Court yesterday, Ms O’Hagan said Turtle told her she knew she would have to do something about it and then said that she had killed James.
Turtle said the little boy had been sleeping and she had put her hand over his mouth for a few seconds and he had stopped breathing.
She said she had not done it before and had not been able to tell police because there had been too many people there, Ms O’Hagan told the court.
The social worker said she wanted to empathise with Turtle and suggested the baby might have been crying but the defendant said the little boy was asleep in his crib.
The court heard Turtle had said: “I just put my hand over his face for a few seconds and he stopped breathing. “It was either this or self-harming.” The trial has been told Turtle put her own anti-depressant drug in her son’s milk bottle.
She also stopped him breathing on three occasions over a 10-day period, the last of which resulted in his death.
Turtle admits all the incidents but denies murder and says she did not intend to kill her son or to cause him really serious harm.
During her evidence Ms O’Hagan said when asked if she had ever done anything like that before Turtle said she had thought about pinching him but had never actually done it.
The witness said: “I was very much aware that it needed to be dealt with by the police and the police needed to hear what she was saying.
“I told her I needed to speak to the police.”
She went out and a colleague remained with her in the room.
When she returned her mood had changed.
Turtle then said she had heard the voice of a family member in her head – she did not know who – telling her that she was a bad mother and that was why she had done it.
Turtle repeated that she had put her hand over his face.
The social worker said Turtle was distressed about her partner Ian Hughes and his mother Kathleen Hughes finding out what she had done to James.
She had been talking about something very sad but she was smiling, which was unusual, she said.
Asked if she was showing any particular emotion, she replied: “No, not in the way that you would expect.”
In her statement the social worker said the defendant appeared to have “a slight smile on her face” and was not really showing any emotion.
The most emotion she showed was when she was arrested.
“She was very tearful then,” Ms O’Hagan added.
The jury has heard Turtle, of Ryeland Street, Shotton, poisoned and fatally suffocated baby James.
The trial has been told she put her own anti-depressant drug in the baby’s milk bottle.
It is also alleged she stopped him breathing on three occasions over a 10-day period, the last of which resulted in his death. He died on June 13, 2016. Turtle denies murder, three charges of ill-treatment and two of administering poison.
The case continues.