Mother bags 7-year jail term for playing games on phone while 7-month old son drowned in bathtub

A 31-year old single mother who was busy playing games on her phone leaving her seven months old son unattended to drown in a bathtub has been sentenced to seven years imprisonment.

The son, Charlie Goodall, was left alone in an unstable bath seat by her mother, Danielle Massey, who was busy playing video games on her phone.

He died after he fell over in the bath and drowned because the mother wasn’t there to pick him up.

Danielle, a worker in a pizza shop, had lied to the police that she had gone to get a towel from upstairs for Charlie but in the process suffered an asthma attack which made her fall asleep on the sofa.

However, her lies were punctured after police discovered In reality, she was actually playing a game on her phone and neglected her son who was alone in the bathroom without knowing he had passed away.

During trial, she told the court that Charlie had eaten chocolate and was dirty so she decided to give him a bath and had gone to get a towel.

However, police found out that during the bath, Danielle she started playing on her phone and app ‘Cooking Madness-Kitchen Frenzy’ at 1.40pm and the game was in use until 2.06pm when she rang 999 after finding Charlie slumped over and lifeless in the bath.

Danielle told the court that after she noticed her son was not breathing, she started giving him CPR and continued under the instructions of an operator until paramedics arrived.

While the court admitted she did not kill her son intentionally, the court blamed her for ‘blatant disregard ‘ to the boy’s safety.

The court noted that Danielle gave different inconsistent excuses for what happened in order to hide the truth.

‘’His tragic death is the consequence of your blatant disregard for the risk of death resulting from your negligent conduct that afternoon,’’Justice Goss told Teesside Crown Court Massey.

Just six days before his death, social services had ended a child protection plan for Charlie on the ground that she could handle him alone.

It was revealed that the same incident had played out in the past with Danielle leaving her other two young children alone in an hostel for 45 minutes while she went shopping, which led to the police taking the children away from her.

She was also known to be a habitual cannabis smoker.