Mother who drowned her daughter insane, jury rules

A WOMAN who drowned and burned her four-year-old daughter has been found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

Carly Ann Harris, 38, was accused of murdering Amelia Brooke Harris at their home after suffering a mental breakdown which made her believe she was saving the world, Newport Crown Court heard.

The jury returned a “special verdict” after hearing that psychiatrists – appearing for both the prosecution and defence – agreed Harris was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Harris, from Tonypandy, South Wales, denied murder and manslaughter and the jury took an hour to return the verdict. Ms Harris has been made the subject of a hospital order.

During the two-day trial, jurors were told there was no dispute that Harris killed her daughter or about the events leading up to the incident.

Amelia’s teenage brother found her body, wrapped in a sheet, on a table in their garden in Trealaw, South Wales, on June 8 this year.

Local residents heard screaming and went into the street to see what was wrong, where they saw Harris’s older children, who were visibly distressed. Neighbour Megan Griffiths saw Harris standing in the front garden, looking “dazed”, and the defendant told her: “God will be with her. The angels have taken her.”

The neighbour dialled 999 and went into the back garden of Harris’s house where she saw Amelia’s charred remains lying on the coffee table covered with a sheet.

When police arrived at the scene, Harris told them: “The angels told me to do it. Just arrest me. It’s okay.”

One of Harris’s two sons said his mother had “not been well” for some six weeks before the incident, the court heard. Home Office pathologist Dr Richard Jones concluded Amelia had died from drowning and was already dead when she was set on fire.

Harris had been taking “small amounts” of amphetamines leading up to the incident, but experts agreed she had not been suffering from drug-induced psychosis.

Dr Arden Tomison, a psychiatrist, diagnosed Harris with schizophrenia. He said she appeared to have experienced “paranoid and religious delusions” and believed she had to kill Amelia to save the world, and was being tested by God who would then return her daughterr.

He added: “She was very sure she had been instructed by God.”