A JURY has heard the emotional police interviews given by the parents of a toddler they are accused of killing.

Gemma Fennelly told detectives about the moment she found 22-month-old Mitchell Bate "blue and cold" at their home on September 16, last year.

The jury heard her claims that the previous day she discovered the toddler in the yard of their Hartlepool home with a bottle of methadone. Miss Fennelly, 24, said Mitchell had the bottle in one hand and the child-proof top in the other hand, and a pool of bright green liquid was on the floor.

She told detectives that she checked the toddler, but did not believe he had swallowed any of the harmful heroin substitute.

During her interview - read out and also played to the jury yesterday - Miss Fennelly said the toddler was playful and ran about "just like Mitchell" for the rest of the day, but was found dead the next morning.

The jury heard Miss Fennelly being told that investigations by experts showed the toddler had been killed by prolonged ingestion of methadone and not a one-off dose. She was asked if she had fed her son methadone, and she sobbed as she insisted: "I would not have dreamed of giving my baby boy methadone - do you know how sick that sounds?"

Miss Fennelly, and boyfriend Mark Bate, 34, are both accused of Mitchell's manslaughter and are on trial at Teesside Crown Court.

The prosecution has suggested that the couple - both heroin users, who were trying to beat their addictions by taking prescribed medication - fed the baby methadone to help him sleep and give them a quiet night.

In Mr Bate's interview, he told police that Mitchell was "the light of his life" and his mother's "blue-eyed man".

Mr Bate, of Rodney Street, Hartlepool, and Miss Fennelly, now of Edinburgh Grove, Hartlepool, face joint charges of manslaughter and individual charges of causing or allowing the death of a child.

The couple also face charges, in the alternative, of manslaughter by an unlawful act namely administering a dose of methadone, or manslaughter by gross negligence by allowing a child access to a fatal dose of methadone

The trial continues, and is expected to last until the end of next week