Hakeem Hussain: Drug addict mother guilty of neglecting asthmatic son, 7, who died alone ‘gasping for air’
Images show how Laura Neath used her ‘frail’ son’s blue inhaler to smoke crack before his death in November 2017
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails
Sign up to our free breaking news emails
Sign up to our free breaking news emails
A drug addict mother has been convicted of fatally neglecting her asthma-suffering seven-year-old son after he died alone and “gasping for air” in a garden.
Laura Heath deliberately “prioritised her addiction to heroin and crack cocaine” prior to the “needless, premature” death of Hakeem Hussain from an asthma attack on 26 November 2017, prosecutors said.
An image seen by jurors during a trial at Coventry Crown Court showed how Heath had even used foil and an elastic band to rig one of her son’s blue inhalers to smoke crack, fuelling a £55-a-day habit.
Heath, formerly of Nechells, Birmingham, was convicted on Friday of gross negligence manslaughter of “frail” Hakeem, who died at the home of a friend where his mother had been staying.
The 40-year-old had admitted four counts of child cruelty before trial, including failing to provide proper medical supervision and exposing Hakeem to class A drugs.
As the verdict was returned, Heath blinked and then looked once at the public gallery but did not move.
Social services in Birmingham were aware of Hakeem before his death, and it emerged at Heath's trial that at a child protection conference on 24 November 2017, just two days before his fatal collapse, a school nurse told the meeting “he could die at the weekend”.
A serious case review into all agencies’ contact with the youngster and his mother, before his death, is set to be published within weeks.
But following the trial, the head of Birmingham Children’s Trust, which took over child social services in early 2018, said there were “clear missed opportunities” in social services’ handling of the case.
Heath will be sentenced next week.
Earlier this month, The Independent exclusively revealed shocking images which showed how Heath used her son’s asthma pump to smoke drugs.
In the pictures, shown to the jury during the trial, one of Hakeem’s blue inhalers could be seen wrapped in foil next to “drug paraphernalia” inside the cluttered home where he was staying with his mother at the time of his death.
Additional reporting by Press Association