A MOTHER sobbed in the witness box as she told the court of the last words her two-year-old son said as he turned white in the moments before his death.  

Lauren O’Neill, the mother of Harry House who allegedly died as a result of injuries inflicted by her partner Joseph Eke, 22, at the couple’s Broadmayne home on May 26 last year, gave evidence at Winchester Crown Court. 

Miss O’Neill, 22, from Dorchester, told the court that on the morning of Harry’s death she left him alone with Eke for five minutes whilst she walked to the shop to get washing powder.  

When she returned home, she asked the defendant to check on Harry. 

Miss O’Neill said: “I’d been home about five or ten minutes. Joe came running down the stairs and said Harry was going to be sick.”

She said Harry looked fine for a couple of minutes before he started to “rapidly deteriorate.”

She said: “He just went all floppy and making funny noises, his eyes were rolling in his head. His face just went really pale and his lips were blue.”

“All he said was ‘I’m fine mummy’ and that was the last thing he said.”

She said Eke had told her not to call an ambulance because “Harry would get taken off me,” because of bruises he had on his back from falling down the stairs a few days earlier.

The court heard that when Miss O’Neill later hugged her dead son in hospital she noticed a number of bruises on his body which had not been there when she washed and dressed him that morning. 

Harry died as a result of blunt force trauma to his abdomen with a post-mortem examination also showing a fractured skull and five fractured ribs.

When the prosecution asked what Miss O’Neill thought of her son’s relationship with Eke, she said: “I thought they interacted well with each other. Harry loved him and I thought he loved Harry.”

She told the court that Eke’s father used to get drunk and beat him, and that he was so scared of him “that he used to poo himself.”

Miss O’Neill split from the defendent after the incident.

In July, two months after Harry’s death, she told the court that Eke had punched and kicked her during an argument in which she accused him of killing Harry. 

She told the court: “Then he said, ‘so what if I did it, none of you have done anything about it anyway’.” 

The jury heard that Harry had an operation on Easter Monday last year after he suffered a wound from his hairline to his lips when he was once again alone in the house with Eke.

The defendant claimed Harry injured himself by falling on a plate on the floor.

Miss O’Neill told the court that in the weeks following, Eke told her he pushed Harry in a text message.

She said she told the defendant she “never wanted to see him again”, but believed him when he said he had not meant it and was only saying it to hurt her. 

Eke is also accused of unlawfully wounding the child, causing actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm. He denies all the charges. 

The trial continues.