Grandma of ‘murdered’ Thornaby toddler ‘regrets not going to doctors’

Claire Walker told Teesside Crown Court how Isabelle Welsh “was the worst [she] had seen her” just a day before she suffered fatal head injuries at her Thornaby home.

The two-year-old’s mother, Alexander Walker, and her new boyfriend, Harrison Simpson, are on trial accused of murder after she suffered a fractured skull and a bleed on the brain.

The grandmother’s police recorded interview was played to jurors as evidence in the trial, which is listed to last six weeks.

Isabelle Rose Welsh (Image: Family handout)

During the interview, she told detectives Isabelle had suffered a broken leg weeks before she died.

Miss Walker recounted how the toddler looked pale when she visited her daughter but believed she was struggling with a virus.

She said “she was the worst I had seen her” when she visited her the day before Isabelle died.

Miss Walker said Isabelle was also complaining about her stomach hurting but thought it was because she had been ‘throwing up’.

Struggling to contain her emotions during the police interview, she said she “is going to regret it for the rest of her life” that she didn’t take Isabelle to the doctors on that day.

When asked about Isabelle’s health and wellbeing in the weeks leading up to her death, Miss Walker told the officers she spotted a bump on her head, bruising around her spine and a ‘fingerprint’ bruise on her hip.

The jury heard how Isabelle was found unconscious at her home when paramedics were called, and they discovered the two-year-old was “gravely unwell and her heart had stopped beating”.

Dan Ackroyd, Walker’s stepfather, told the police he had tried to perform CPR when he arrived at her home before paramedics took over and managed to restart her heart.

When asked by Mark McKone KC, representing Walker, how she was acting when he arrived at her home, Mr Ackroyd said she was ‘visibly shaking’ and crying.

Despite the best efforts of medical staff, the toddler died in the early hours of September 14 after suffering a fractured skull and brain damage.

Jurors were told Isabelle suffered 21 fractures, including a fatal one to her skull, as well as enduring significant sexual abuse in the weeks leading up to her death.

Earlier in the trial, the jury heard how Walker searched online, checking for any information about Simpson being a child sex offender.

Tributes to Isabelle Welsh were outside her Thornaby home (Image: TERRY BLACKBURN)

The court had heard the pair had only been in a relationship for a few months when Isabelle suffered all of her injuries, including the fatal skull fracture.

Simpson, 22, of Greenham Close in Thorntree, Middlesbrough, and Walker, of Hartington Close in Thornaby, deny murder.

The pair also deny four other charges involving Isabelle, including: causing or allowing the death of a child on September 14; two counts of assault by penetration between September 10 and September 14 last year; and cruelty to a person under 16.

The trial continues.