Mum who stabbed her two children denied knowing what she was doing, jury hears

A woman who killed her toddler son and almost killed his baby brother tearfully denied to police that she knew what she was doing in interviews, a jury heard on Monday.

The jury in Antrim Crown Court also heard the 41-year-old mother claim that her last memory before waking up in a hospital intensive care unit was being in the playroom with the two boys and seeing “their wee faces playing happily".

The transcript of the defendant’s police interviews were read to the jury.

They heard how detectives put to her that in the space of time she can't recall, she drugged the two little boys, drugged herself, texted her fiancé, penned several notes, took the boys and a knife upstairs to the bedroom and stabbed them in their necks and abdomen in a “calculated way".

“You murdered your child and attempted to murder the other and it’s only through medical intervention that he was saved,” said the detective who asked her directly: “Did you intend to kill the boys?”

“No, no, I would not even have dreamt of it,” she told police.

“Do you accept that you killed your son?” the officer demanded to know but the boys’ mother told them “how can I - I loved them so much.”

The 41-year-old mother-of-four is on trial accused of murdering her son who was two months short of his third birthday and the attempted murder of his 11-month-old little brother on 2 March 2020.

The jury of seven men and five women have already heard harrowing evidence the 41-year-old “highly qualified nurse” put multiple morphine pain relief patches on the children before stabbing them numerous times in the bedroom of the family home in Magheramorne outside Larne.

She left “suicide notes” that she did not want them to “experience pain” and “I'm taking my kids with me because I can't leave them with their dad".

Both boys had sustained stab wounds to their necks and abdomens but the oldest victim died as a result of a wound which severed an artery and a vain in his neck.

His little brother came within millimetres of death and had to undergo emergency surgery.

It is the Crown case that when she stabbed them, she either intended to kill them or at least intended to cause her infant sons serious harm.

The defence argues that at the time the mother was suffering from an abnormality of mind which substantially impaired her thinking, decision making and perception of consequences.

Last week, the trial judge, told the jury “there is no dispute” that the defendant stabbed the children but rather, “what is in dispute is her mental state at the relevant time".

The trial continues.