25/02/2005

Five-years for mother who poisoned son with salt

A mother who killed her son with an overdose of salt has been sentenced to five years in prison.

Petrina Stocker, 42, from Romford in Essex, was found guilty at the Old Bailey yesterday, of the manslaughter of her nine-year-old son, David.

David died in Great Ormond Street Hospital in London in August 2001, after Mrs Stocker put a large quantity of salt into her son's drip.

The boy had been receiving treatment at the hospital since February 2001, although doctors had been unable to discover what was wrong with him. This was attributed to the range of various symptoms suffered by the boy, including loss of appetite and lethargy, as well as attempts made by Mrs Stocker to mislead the doctors.

At today's sentencing, Judge Gerald Gordon said that Mrs Stocker would have to live with what she had done for the rest of her life.

He said: "Public revulsion at behaviour such as this means that a custodial sentence is inevitable."

The court heard that Mrs Stocker, as well as tampering with her son's intravenous drip, had also manufactured vomit samples and placed blood into samples of the boy's urine.

The prosecution said that these were attempts to invent or produce misleading symptoms and fabricate aspects of David's illness.

(KMcA/SP)

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