UK trial: Mauled Ellie's grandmother 'on drugs'

A woman charged over the death of her granddaughter took drugs and alcohol the day the five-year-old was mauled by a family pet, a court heard today.

Grandmother Jacqueline Simpson, 45, also flouted a family rule by allowing the powerfully built pit bull terrier into the house, it was claimed.

Ellie Lawrenson was killed in the early hours of New Year’s Day when the dog - Reuben – locked its jaws around her throat and shook her around Simpson’s living room. She had 72 injuries.

Today, Neil Flewitt QC told Liverpool Crown Court Simpson’s judgment may have been impaired by smoking cannabis and drinking alcohol.

He said: “It was the view of the forensic scientist who carried out the analysis that ’the concurrent presence of these drugs has the potential to have affected her actions at the time of the incident’, although he was unable to say to what extent she may have been affected.”

Ellie – twice as light as Reuben at only 17kg or 2st 9lbs – was dead at the scene when paramedics arrived.

She had been staying with her grandmother to see in the New Year.

Simpson, who witnessed the attack and was injured during it, knew about two previous attacks on her daughter and a neighbour and was supposed to keep the dog outside, the prosecution alleged.

Mr Flewitt said on 29 May last year Reuben, who belonged to Simpson’s son Kiel, 24, attacked a neighbour walking his Jack Russell.

In an incident which Mr Flewitt said was witnessed by Simpson, the neighbour fought off Reuben with his walking stick before the pit bull picked up the Jack Russell.

On 21 November, 2006 – six weeks before Ellie was killed – Reuben attacked Simpson’s daughter Kelsey.

Mr Flewitt said: “According to Kelsey Simpson, she saw something in Reuben’s eyes that she had never seen before. They were bulging, red and horrible.”

He added: “Reuben tried to grab hold of Kelsey Simpson’s top with his teeth.

“He then sank his teeth into Kelsey Simpson’s right leg just above the knee and tried to shake her.”

The jury of seven men and five women heard that Reuben was no longer viewed as a pet after that and was always locked outside when Ellie was present.

Mr Flewitt said: “There is no doubt that the defendant was aware of, and agreed to and generally complied with these arrangements so as to ensure that there was no contact between Reuben and either Kelsey Simpson or Ellie.”

But minutes before the fatal attack, which Simpson told police might have been sparked by a firework, she took pity on Reuben, which was “crying and whimpering” outside.

In a police interview the defendant admitted she should have kept the dog outside.

She told officers: “I shouldn’t have let him in, should I?”

Simpson told police: “He just looked scared and, I don’t know, I have asked myself a million, million times why did I do it?

“He just didn’t look like he normally looked, he just looked scared.

“I let him in and he was all right, when he come in he was just wagging his tail, running round your legs like he used to.”

But that quickly changed, Simpson told officers, when the dog attacked Ellie.

“I was fighting with it, I was trying to get it off her.

“It put her down, it just started running round barking and just barking, just barking.

“I just tried to get it out of the door with some biscuits or anything, it just, because I couldn’t grab it, because there was blood everywhere, it was just barking.”

Mr Flewitt added: “She knew that Reuben had become dangerous and she knew that precautions had been put in place to ensure he did not come into contact with Ellie.

“Yet, for no good reason, she allowed Reuben to have access to Ellie in circumstances that undoubtedly led directly to her death.”

Police were called to the house on Knowles House Avenue, St Helens, Merseyside, and shot the dog dead after two handlers agreed they could not deal with him.

The court heard that Reuben used to exercise by bouncing on a trampoline with a piece of wood in his mouth.

A police expert said he was the finest, strongest pit bull he had ever seen.

Simpson denies manslaughter by gross negligence.

Her son Kiel admitted owning a dangerous dog earlier this year.