Mother 'delayed calling 999' for dying child
Supplied- Warning: This story contains distressing details
A mother jointly accused of the abuse and murder of her young daughter delayed calling 999 when the toddler was dying because she knew she would be questioned about what happened, a court has been told.
Two-year-old Isabelle Welsh collapsed at home in Thornaby, near Middlesbrough, having suffered a "massive head injury" in September last year. She died in hospital the following day.
Her mother Alexandra Walker, 25, and her partner Harrison Simpson, 22, deny murder, allowing the death of a child, sexual assault and child cruelty.
Prosecutor Richard Wright KC said: "It is absolutely obvious by this time Isabelle is gravely ill, she is quite simply dying and yet Alexandra Walker does nothing."
Wright said that on the day before Isabelle died the defendants had been up late drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.
While Walker stayed in bed the following morning, Simpson was up and in sole care of the toddler, Teesside Crown Court heard.
He later put Isabelle to bed and left the two-bedroom property at about 15:00 BST.
Wright said within 10 minutes Walker searched the phrase "why would my toddler be bleeding" on Google.
Internal CCTV from her home recorded her saying "you're scaring me" before she searched for "what should I do if my child has blood in his stool".
Around this time, Walker went into the kitchen to smoke a cigarette, jurors were told.
About an hour after Simpson left, Walker called her stepfather who arrived at 16:15 and immediately told her to call 999.
Paramedics arrived within a minute and Isabelle was rushed to hospital, but she died in the early hours of the next day.
'Bluff and bluster'
Earlier in the month, Walker had taken her Isabelle to hospital with a broken leg and explained the injury as Isabelle hurting herself by poking her leg through her cot.
Wright said to the jury: "In due course you may want to consider why there was a very significant delay in summoning the emergency services.
"One explanation of course is that Alexandra Walker knew that this time she would not be able to bluff and bluster her way out of the very difficult questions that she knew she would be asked at hospital."
Walker and Simpson were arrested and the mother said they had been together for a month and she had raised concerns about bruises on Isabelle's body, but he had denied being responsible.
In a separate, later interview, she told police she now realised Simpson had been abusing her daughter.
Simpson did not answer questions during interviews, Wright said.
The prosecutor told the court: "The prosecution will invite you to conclude that Alexandra Walker was telling lies and that Harrison Simpson said nothing because he had no answer at all to the questions that were being asked.
"They both knew exactly what had happened to Isabelle because in the weeks before her death they had each subjected her to violence culminating in the infliction of that terrible, fatal head injury.
"It would have been, we will invite you to conclude, perfectly obvious that child was being seriously assaulted on a regular basis."
The trial continues.
