I’d like to tell you about a little boy called Connor Wellsted. I spoke to one of his foster parents, Shazia, and she told me about Connor, his life, and what is understood about his death following his inquest. Connor was born in April 2012 in Sheffield, he was born prematurely and acquired a brain […]
Today, the tenth day of Gaia’s inquest, the whole day was spent hearing evidence from her aunt, Talia Pope. Her evidence will be finished tomorrow morning, but as I’m unfortunately not available to hear it, I thought I’d blog now. The coroner took Talia through her evidence, and she also played a number of recordings […]
Today in court we heard the first of the evidence from Gaia’s family members. After another delayed start due to housekeeping and scheduling matters which we are not permitted to report upon, the jury were brought into court just before 11am. Clara Pope Sutherland, Gaia’s elder sister, was called to give evidence. After confirming some […]
There was a pre inquest review hearing yesterday but there’s a restriction on what can be reported, that also applies to discussions that take place when the jury aren’t in court. So I can’t tell you about them, which is irksome. We were due to start at 10am today, the jury weren’t brought into court […]
Thursday afternoon and Friday morning of Gaia’s inquest were spent hearing the evidence of Dr Peter Jeffery, a Consultant Psychiatrist at Dorset Healthcare. At the time of his involvement with Gaia, in October 2017, he was a ST5 trainee psychiatrist, which he described as a “higher trainee, approximately a year off completing training to become […]
Day 6 of Gaia’s inquest started with the evidence of mental health nurse Louise Emeny Senior, who at the time of Gaia’s October 2017 admission was a liaison psychiatry practitioner working at Poole General Hospital. Throughout the questioning of Mrs Emeny Senior by Ms Clarke, counsel to the inquest, the Coroner, and by Ms Miles […]
When I’m reporting from an inquest I try to just share the testimony that’s given. Which is much easier with live tweeting because you don’t select any, I just splurge as much out there as possible and readers can make their own minds up. For Gaia’s inquest I’ve decided not to live tweet because I […]
This morning was the fourth day of Gaia’s inquest and the morning was taken up with one witness, Professor Matthew Walker, a Professor of Neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London and at UCL. Most of the questioning came from counsel to the inquest, Sarah Clarke, and the Coroner. Professor Walker […]
This morning the jury at Gaia’s inquest heard from the pathologist, Dr Russell Delaney, who conducted her post mortem and ascertained her cause of death. Dr Delaney has been a Home Office Registered Pathologist since March 2009, and he undertook Gaia’s post mortem on 19 November 2017 at Holly Tree Lodge mortuary in Boscombe, Bournemouth. Senior Coroner Rachael […]
Gaia’s full inquest hearing was opened yesterday with a jury of thirteen sworn in to assist the Senior Coroner for Dorset, Rachael Griffin. The Coroner introduced in broad terms what happened to Gaia, I’m not sure anyone who has followed the pre-inquest review hearings would have necessarily learnt anything knew, but there’s coverage from Steven […]