Overview
- Relatives found Rhys Cameron and his mother at their Billingham home on Monday, September 15, with the eight-year-old dead and his mother barely conscious after an apparent overdose.
- Prosecutors say Louise Cameron repeatedly gave Rhys blackcurrant juice from a pink Hello Kitty-style bottle that was laced with methadone and morphine in the hours before he died.
- A pathologist told the jury that Rhys died from the combined effects of methadone and morphine and that the drugs caused respiratory failure.
- Evidence presented at the trial includes a handwritten note where the defendant said she gave Rhys an overdose, police body-worn camera recordings of admissions, CCTV of a family outing and a 999 call from a relative.
- Cameron was found unfit to plead so jurors are conducting a trial of the facts to decide, on the balance of probabilities, whether she caused Rhys’s death and the proceedings are ongoing with wider questions about prior social services contact heard in court.