A mother who was playing a cooking game on her phone while her baby son drowned in the bath has been jailed for seven years for manslaughter.
Seven-month-old Charlie Goodall died after falling over in an unstable bath seat as his mother Danielle Massey left him alone “for a prolonged period of time” at their home in County Durham.
Teesside Crown Court heard Charlie was found unresponsive in the bath when police were called by paramedics to a house in West Chilton Terrace, Chilton, on February 16 2022.
Massey, 31, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, saying she accepted it was her fault the seat was not properly fixed to the bath.
The defendant denied intentionally leaving Charlie unsupervised for a prolonged period of time, telling the court she had left the ground floor bathroom to go upstairs and get a towel for him.
Massey, who is asthmatic, claimed she then went back downstairs and had to sit on the sofa to catch her breath before closing her eyes. She said she went into the bathroom to find Charlie unresponsive in the bath and called 999.
The court heard she gave varying accounts of how long Charlie had been left unattended, ranging from two to 10 minutes.
Asked about digital evidence showing she had been using an app called Cooking Madness: A chef’s Game for 26 minutes during the time when Charlie was alone, Massey said she had not been actively playing the game at the time of his death and it was just running in the background.
On Wednesday, a judge rejected Massey’s account after a Newton hearing and sentenced her on the basis that she was “active and awake” when her son was drowning in another room.
Mr Justice Goss 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.”
The court heard Massey and her son lived in a mother and toddler unit for several months before coming home, and a child protection plan for Charlie by social services had come to an end days before his death.
He was moved to the next level down – a voluntary arrangement with social services instead of one with legal consequences for not engaging with them, the judge was told.
Prosecutor Richard Wright KC said Massey had undergone at least one course in bathing “and thereby understood the need to have towels ready and the need to leave a baby of this age unsupervised for any period of time”.
The court heard the seat used for Charlie should be fixed to the bath with suction pads, but could not be properly fitted in Massey’s bath because of the curvature.
Mr Wright 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.”
