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A mentally ill woman killed her four-year-old son in the bath of her London flat three years after telling a nurse about a previous attempt to drown him, a court has heard.
Paranoid schizophrenic Oluwakemi Badare, 37, called emergency services to her home in Plumstead, on December 27, 2020.
She told the operator she had killed her son by drowning but also that she had left him in the bath and forgotten about him, the Old Bailey was told.
The jury heard that paramedics found four-year-old Kingswealth Badare’s wet body at the top of the stairs outside the bathroom.
Nigerian Badare was charged with murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter by gross negligence.
She suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and is not fit to plead or participate in the trial but a jury will decide whether she killed her son.
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC said he had scratches, bruises and skin defects on his head, neck and upper body “consistent with pressure from fingernails and focal pressure to the head”.
“These marks suggest that Kingswealth had been held under the water – and had been drowned deliberately,” he said.
He told jurors their job would be to decide whether she did the act with which she is charged – that she drowned her son deliberately or accidentally.
Badare came to the UK from Nigeria in 2009 giving birth to Kingswealth in April 2016.
She had a 10-year diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, the court heard.
She was receiving treatment in the community when, in 2017, she relapsed and held her son under water, jurors heard.
Mr Atkinson said, “At that time, she was suffering from delusions and reported to a nurse during her subsequent in-patient admission to hospital that she had held Kingswealth under water for less than a minute when she believed that she was under surveillance.
“Of course there is only the defendant’s own account of that attempt to drown her son in 2017 and it relates to a time when she was very unwell.
“However, it was recorded by the hospital and child care services in 2017.
“Moreover, the defendant repeated her account of what she had done when she was spoken to by a nurse, this time a custody nurse at the police station after her arrest for the death of her son in 2020.
“The prosecution suggest it is unlikely to be a coincidence that, when unwell, the defendant should try to drown her son in 2017 and yet in 2020, again when she was unwell, Kingswealth should actually drown by accident rather than by an act of his mother.”
Before the prosecution opening on Wednesday, Judge Richard Marks told jurors it was a “distressing case”.
He said, “It is important that you put emotion to one side, that you do not allow any upset you may feel about the background of the case influence you in any way.”
Nicholas Goh, an incident response officer with London Ambulance Service, spoke to Badare who was “banging her arms on the sofa” when emergency services arrived in 2020.
“She became calm and said that they went for a bubble bath last night and that when she put him in the water he screamed as it was cold,” Mr Atkinson said.
The prosecutor continued, “Paramedics noted that Kingswealth’s body was wet and there were bubbles on it.
“He was not breathing.
“His hair was waterlogged and there was water in his ears.
“It was noted that the child’s jaw was stiff, his limbs were stiff, his lungs were full.
“It was considered…that there was no point to attempting resuscitation as rigor mortis had already set in.”
Police then arrived and spoke to Badare who was noted to be “restless”, the court heard.
She asked to see her son’s body but her request was refused.
Following her arrest she told the officer: “Yes, I forgot him in the bath.”
Badare is said to have collapsed as she was taken downstairs, crying, “I fell asleep.”
The prosecution allege that Badare caused the death of her child.
A post-mortem examination found Kingswealth was a well nourished child and there were no signs of neglect.
Badare, of Invermore Place, Plumstead, denies murder and an alternative lesser charge of manslaughter by gross negligence, on the basis of her account that she forgot her son was in the bath.
The trial continues.
*MailOnline
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