A teenage mother murdered her newborn baby son by assaulting him and stuffing cotton wool in his throat after suddenly and unexpectedly’ giving birth alone, jurors have been told.
Paris Mayo, who is now 19 but was 15 at the time of the incident, then dumped the infant’s body in a bin bag on the front door step and went to bed, a court heard.
The following morning, the youth put his body into a rubbish bag and sent a text message to her older brother, asking: ‘When you go outside, can you put the black bag in the bin?’
But her hysterical mother found the baby in the bag and called emergency services.
Mayo, now aged 19, has gone on trial and is accused of killing in March 2019 and was charged with the murder of little Stanley Mayo last year after an inquiry by West Mercia Police.
She denies murdering her baby, who was born full-term or nearly full-term, on the night of March 23, 2019.
Prosecutor Jonas Hankin KC said the boy was ‘full or near full term’ and born alive in the living room, while his maternal grandparents were upstairs – after Mayo had concealed her pregnancy from her family.
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Mr Hankin added: ‘The birth took place in the living room of the family home where Miss Mayo lived with her parents and brother George.
‘She was alone and delivered the baby unaided while her unwell father was upstairs having dialysis being overseen by her mother.
‘Following delivery the defendant assaulted the baby to the upper front left and right side of his head causing a severe brain injury.
‘Approximately two hours later, realising the baby was still alive, she stuffed pieces of cotton wool into his mouth and neck.
‘She put the baby’s body inside a bin bag and deposited it on the front doorstep before going up to bed.
‘The first piece to go in was forced down so deeply into the oesophagus – the tube through which we carry food to our stomachs – it was only discovered on dissection of the neck at autopsy’.
The court heard the cotton wool blocked Stanley’s airway and he suffocated at the family home in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, on March 23 2019.
Worcester Crown Court heard Mayo thought she was experiencing menstrual pains on the evening the baby was born and had a warm bath.
Her brother George left her glasses of warm milk and water outside the bathroom door before he went out for the night.
When he got home Mayo asked him not to enter the living room because she had bled heavily, the jury was told.
The next morning the teenager sent her brother a text message asking him to get rid of the bin bag saying it contained her ‘sick’ from the previous night.
But when Mayo’s mother opened the bag, the prosecutor said she ‘suddenly went hysterical and was heard to say, ‘There’s a baby in the bag’ and… ‘Paris has given birth’.
Jurors were told the baby’s death came to light when Mayo’s mother asked her son what was in the bin bag, which was described in court as ‘unusually heavy’ and had left ‘streaks’ of blood on the doorstep.
Mr Hankin said: ‘The defendant’s mother called emergency services saying her daughter had given birth. She was heard saying: ‘You could have told me darling. Poor baby. Why didn’t you tell me?’
Paramedics arrived and found Mayo in the house sitting with her mother, holding the baby who was ‘wrapped in a sheet… and no sign of life’.
Mr Hankin said: ‘She (Mayo) said it (the baby) had stuff coming out of its mouth and she used cotton wool to try to clean it up.
‘She said she had put some cotton wool inside the baby’s mouth, to stop any more coming out, and later, in the ambulance, described this stuff as ‘fluid’.
‘She said she had put the baby in the bag because she didn’t know what to do’.
The jury was given a plan of the family home in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, and instructed to write ‘birth’ in the room where the baby was born. They will also be played the 999 call from Mayo’s mother.
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