'Starved' boy case: Jury considers verdict

A jury has retired to consider its verdict in the case of a mother-of-eight accused of starving her four-year-old son to death.

Amanda Hutton (aged 43) denies the manslaughter of Hamzah Khan, whose decomposed and insect-infested body was found in a travel cot in her bedroom at their home in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

A two-week trial at Bradford Crown Court has heard that Hamzah's remains had been in the cot for almost two years when they were found by police searching the house on September 21, 2011.

The little boy had died almost two years before on December 15, 2009.

The jury has heard that Hamzah's body was found in the house in the Heaton area of the city in terrible squalor, where five other school-aged siblings were living.

Hutton has admitted a charge of child cruelty in respect of each of these children, who were aged between five and 13 in 2011.

Prosecutors have told the jury of eight men and four women that Hamzah most probably died from malnutrition because Hutton neglected him due to her alcohol addiction.

They say she starved her son to death.

But Hutton has told the court that she struggled to get her son to eat and he died suddenly.

The prosecution case is that Hutton was grossly negligent, either because she failed to feed Hamzah or, when he got more and more ill, she failed to get medical attention for him.

Hutton told the jury that she never sought medical advice because she thought he was going through a phase and would grow out of it.

She said she panicked after his death and only kept claiming child benefit for Hamzah because she was worried that, if she stopped, his body would be discovered.

Hutton claims the appalling conditions police officers found at her home when they finally searched the property only developed after her son's death.

Hutton has also admitted a charge of preventing the burial of a corpse along with her eldest son, Tariq, 24.