A mum has been jailed for seven years after her seven-month-old son drowned in a bath after being left alone, while she played games on her phone.
“Avid gamer” Danielle Massey, 31, who is also a habitual cannabis user, is said to have been “distracted” from watching the tot, Charlie Goodall, for 26 minutes while playing on the apps and possibly falling asleep on the sofa at a house in Chilton, County Durham.
Massey had already admitted manslaughter and cannabis possession on the day of his death in 2022. Earlier today, she was contesting the basis of her guilty plea in a trial of issue at Teeside Crown Court, maintaining her gross negligence is only based on the use of an “unsuitable” bath seat and not playing games.
However, prosecutors have accused her of coming up with different stories of how the tragic situation unfolded in an attempt to “conceal the truth”.
The Mirror reported that Massey and Charlie were known to social services and under supervision at the time of his death, with the care plan set to end after no ongoing issues were discovered.
Charlie is said to have been left unsupervised in a bath seat which did not properly fit inside Massey’s bath, and fell out. The court heard that Massey’s mobile phone was open for 26 minutes during the time he was in the bath, with three apps opened, including a cooking game. However, she insists she was bathing Charlie at the time and not using the phone.
She claims she left the bathroom to find a clean towel, but says she suffered an asthma attack and believed she may have fallen asleep on her sofa as she caught her breath. When she returned, she found Charlie unresponsive in the bath and attempted to resuscitate him.
After paramedics arrived, Charlie was airlifted to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle but died shortly after arriving. Massey is said to have told medics she went to make him a bottle, not to fetch a towel. She was arrested and later told a police officer: “It’s all my fault. I killed my baby.”
During the trial, Mr Justice Goss said she “constructed” various “changing and inconsistent” stories to “conceal the truth”. He acknowledged she did not intend to harm her son, but adding: “His tragic death is the consequence of your blatant disregard for the risk of death resulting from your negligent conduct that afternoon.”
He 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.”
Massey told the court: “I bathed my son, I went to get a towel. I did not play on the games.”
Join the Daily Record’s WhatsApp community here and get the latest news sent straight to your messages.
Prosecutor Richard Wright KC said Massey admitted to smoking cannabis on the day of Charlie’s death, but denied it caused her to fall asleep on the sofa. She claimed her sleep had been broken for the past two days due to her cat having given birth.
He added: “The prosecution case is that defendant left her child unattended for a long period of time, 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.”
On the witness stand, Massey described how the incident unfolded: “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.”
Massey, who was diagnosed with asthma in 2013, claims she needed to recover her breath. She continued: “I closed my eyes during the breathing techniques. I’m not 100% if I fell asleep, I was exhausted.”
She recalled returning to the bathroom and finding Charlie lying unresponsive, before starting CPR. When quizzed on why she gave paramedics a different story, 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 dead at this point.”
The court heard the bath seat she had placed Charlie in did not fit correctly into her bath using suction pads because of the bath’s curvature. Mr Wright KC said: “The court can be sure that the cause of Charlie’s death by drowning was not simply because the bath seat was not properly adhering to the basin, but because he was left in the bath seat … unsupervised over a prolonged period of time.
“The court can be sure that the period of time in which he was unattended was not the result of inadvertence but as a result of the defendant making a deliberate decision to leave the bathroom and occupy herself with other tasks, including playing a game on her mobile telephone.”
Martin Sharpe, defending Massey, said: “It’s quite clear she did have a very strong bond with Charlie. She didn’t mean to cause harm to Charlie.”
He told the court: “She did lack organisation, she didn’t follow the instructions and should never have left Charlie unattended.”
Don’t miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond – Sign up to our daily newsletter here.