My mother was precious, accused says

Angela Pearson, 53, from Guiseley, Leeds, is alleged to have allowed her 82-year-old bed-ridden mother to die of malnutrition and infected sores.

And the West Yorkshire Police employee is said to have failed to summon timely medical help before she took the dead body to hospital last May.

When police visited their home in Fairway they found it was in extreme squalor, with rooms piled high with discarded possessions, soiled clothes and nappies, food waste, human waste and decaying rubbish.

Giving evidence at Preston Crown Court, the prosecution team officer at West Yorkshire Police’s Leeds Criminal Justice Support Unit accepted she had a duty of care to her mother as her sole carer.

“I was upholding my duty of care,” she said. “I was doing everything I could for her.”

Pearson told the court her mother had not left their house since her husband died in 2001 and mainly stayed in bed.

She started getting bedsores at the end of 2010 but Pearson had treated them herself successfully.

“I could treat them no problem, I had every confidence in my ability,” she said. “My mum was the most precious person in my life and I had the ability to care for her and she had that faith in me.”

In the days before her death on May 10 last year her mother’s appetite lessened and she slept more.

She told the court she knew her mother, whom she insisted had shown no signs of dementia, was deteriorating but was monitoring her. “I just felt I am doing the right thing but tomorrow, the Wednesday, I was going to get medical help.”

She left her to clear a path from the cluttered bedroom so she could get her out of the house the next day but when she returned 15 minutes later she had died.

She carried her to her car, put a seatbelt on her and drove her to Leeds General Infirmary where she asked hospital staff for assistance.

Her barrister Andrew Stubbs QC said: “Did you think that your mother was going to die?”

She replied: “I had no absolutely no idea at all.”

Pearson denies manslaughter by gross negligence.