A TODDLER who climbed on the sofa beside his baby brother and fell asleep may have contributed to the baby's death, an inquest heard yesterday.

When their father - who was sleeping in the same room - woke later, his nine-week-old baby son was dead.

His elder son, then 16 months, had climbed on to the settee with the baby and fallen asleep on top of him.

At yesterday's inquest on Teesside, paediatric pathologist Dr Christopher Wright said he had not been able to establish what killed the baby, but said there were two possibilities.

One was that the baby had died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, also known as cot death, which doctors are still unable to explain.

He said: "I cannot exclude the possibility, given the toddler was bigger and may have been able to stop the baby breathing."

The inquest heard that the 22-year-old father laid his nine-week-old son on a settee to sleep after a dawn feed last April, before he fell asleep in the same downstairs room.

The unemployed factory worker woke several hours later to find that his elder son - then 16 months - had climbed on to the settee and had fallen asleep on top of his brother.

The father told Cleveland Police that he awoke to find the toddler lying across the baby, with his left shoulder across the baby's face.

The baby was the second the couple have lost.

Dr Wright told Teesside Coroner Michael Sheffield that the baby was well-grown and clean, with no malformation, and was suffering from no metabolic disease or virus that could explain his death.

Health visitor Jean Gardner said neither parent had ever given her cause for concern on her visits to the family's Teesside home.

Tragedy first struck the family in 2000 when the couple lost a baby through cot death.

* The Northern Echo has decided not to reveal the identity of the baby in the interests of the family.