A MOTHER accused of killing her four-year-old child cried out: “My baby, my baby” when they arrived at hospital by ambulance, a court heard yesterday.

Sharon Wright mopped her eyes with a tissue and was crying intermittently as she learned that little Leticia was “very ill,” the jury at Bradford Crown Court was told.

Wright, 23, of Almondbury Bank, Moldgreen, Huddersfield, and her former boyfriend Peter Seaton, 22, of Meadow Lane, Northallerton, have both pleaded not guilty to murder.

The Crown allege that the child had been burned, bitten and beaten in the days before her death last November and that either or both of the defendants were responsible for the multiple injuries she suffered.

Staff Nurse Lynn Taylor told the court she was on duty at the accident and emergency department of Huddersfield Royal Infirmary when the emergency ambulance arrived.

She saw a paramedic carry the child in a blanket into the unit and two other paramedics escort Wright, who was in a distressed state.

“She was covering her face with her hands and calling out ‘My baby, my baby,’” said Mrs Taylor.

When they were inside the relatives’ room, she asked Wright what had happened.

“She was crying into her hands, her head lowered on to her knees,” she added.

When asked how Leticia had been in the past 24 hours, Wright told her she had had a little bit of diarrhoea and been a bit sickly, but “nothing more than that”.

She had taken her upstairs for a bath and then brought her downstairs to dry her in the warm room. She then went upstairs to fetch the child’s pyjamas and when she returned a moment or two later she saw her laid on her back, wrapped in a towel.

Mrs Taylor said Wright found her child was unresponsive, so she called her name and shook her. When there was no response, she proceeded to call an ambulance and said a member of the ambulance service had told her over the phone how to try and resuscitate her.

At the hospital, Mrs Taylor went to the resuscitation room to try to establish the child’s condition.

She said she saw the whole team deployed, all actively working on Leticia.

She returned to the relatives’ room and told Wright what she had seen.

“She was mopping her eyes with a tissue,” said Mrs Taylor. “She was intermittently crying and rocking on the sofa.”

She said she asked Wright if she wanted the child’s father contacted, but she replied that he was no longer on the scene.

Asked if she wanted her current partner to be notified, she replied: “No.”

The trial continues.