Three babies were suffocated, murder trial of mother told

THE deaths of a mother’s three babies were probably caused by an adult suffocating them or restricting their breathing, a leading paediatrician told a court yesterday.

Professor Sir Roy Meadow said "asphyxiation caused by an adult" was the "most probable diagnosis" to explain the deaths of Trupti Patel's three babies between 1997 and 2001.

Patel, 35, who was living in Maidenhead, Berkshire, at the time her three babies died, denies murdering her two sons Amar and Jamie and daughter Mia.

Professor Meadow, a former paediatrician at St James's Hospital in Leeds and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, told the trial at Reading Crown Court that he did not think there was any known medical disorder that could account for the deaths of Patel's three children.

"Considering the three deaths together, and taking all of the extensive investigations during life and after death which disclosed no natural abnormality, and the fact that Mia did have fractured ribs at autopsy, I believe the most probably diagnosis is asphyxia caused by an adult, either by smothering or by restriction of chest movement," he said.

Professor Meadow told the hearing that for a family to have a third child die suddenly and unexpectedly was "very unusual" "She (Mia) was very unusual the third child in the family to die without reason being found," he said. "In general, sudden and unexpected death does not run in families, so this was a very unexpected event."

Prof Meadow, who is also a member of the Royal College of Paediatric Child Health, said there were factors which he believed supported his conclusion that the three babies were asphyxiated.

"The fractured ribs (in Mia), the fact that the children underwent a lot of medical investigation in life before death, the fact that there was a very short interval for two of the children between being well and dying."

Prof Meadow said it was a "theoretical possibility" that an as yet unidentified illness or medical condition could have caused the deaths of the Patel's three children. However he said he thought it was extremely unlikely.