Mansfield mother 'murdered daughter in deliberate scalding'

A mother "deliberately" scalded her infant daughter then delayed getting help as she died so she could "cover her tracks", a court has heard.

Katie Crowder, from Mansfield, is on trial at Nottingham Crown Court accused of the murder of 19-month-old Gracie.

The prosecution said Gracie could not have sustained such deep, severe and extensive injuries through an accidental spill, and would have taken about an hour to die.

Ms Crowder, 26, denies murder.

Prosecutor Sally Howes QC said "Gracie was killed by a deliberate and unlawful act by her mother" at their home in Wharmby Avenue on 6 March.

She described how Ms Crowder appeared at her parents' nearby house in the early hours holding Gracie in her arms, shouting "she is dead".

The prosecutor said the defendant's mother asked: "What the hell have you done?"

Ms Crowder is alleged to have said: "I don't know, I found her like this."

Her father attempted to resuscitate the toddler until an ambulance crew took her to hospital, where she was pronounced dead after suffering deep burns that covered 65% of her body.

Ms Howes said a post-mortem examination gave her cause of death as "scalds and thermal burns from exposure to hot liquid".

She said Ms Crowder told officers she had been "cleaning up a mess from the puppy" and found her daughter face down in the bathroom next to a mop bucket.

Experts believed it would have taken Gracie "in the region of an hour" to die from her injuries, and she would have been "screaming", jurors heard.

"Katie Crowder cannot have failed to have heard it, so why the delay in calling for help?" Ms Howes said.

"She was covering her tracks. She knew what she had done, cleaning up, cleaning away, thinking of what she could possibly say as an explanation."

Ms Howes told the jury the amount of cocaine found in the defendant's blood four hours after the incident indicated she took the class A drug an hour before Gracie's death.

Jurors heard how the mother made comments about her daughter in the past, such as: "I need to get her to nursery, I never get a break at all."

The trial continues.

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