Great Southern mum not guilty of trying to kill disabled daughter with insulin but guilty of endangering life

A Great Southern mother on trial for trying to kill her severely disabled daughter by injecting her with insulin has been found not guilty of attempted murder but guilty of endangering her life. However, the verdict was not unanimous, with Justice Marcus Solomon accepting a majority verdict just before lunch on Monday after the jury could not come to a unanimous verdict after more than seven hours over two days of deliberations. It took them 15 minutes to reach a majority. The mother — who cannot be named to protect the identity of her daughter — claimed that she never intended to kill the little girl and only injected her with the diabetic medication to create a fake medical emergency to get her into hospital for treatment. During the trial, the woman said that in the months leading up to the incident she had difficulty in obtaining services for her daughter and that her child needed to be urgently admitted into hospital because she was in the early stages of dying. The girl, the trial was told, was not putting on weight, had breathing difficulties and increasing problems with her bowels. However, under cross-examination the woman, who was the child’s main carer, conceded that despite her daughter’s desperate situation, she never took her to emergency to get help. She also conceded that her daughter had never been refused admission when they had taken to her to emergency previoulsy. It was also revealed during the trial that on the day she injected her daughter with the insulin — January 19, 2022 — the girl had an appointment at Perth Children’s Hospital, which she missed. In her evidence, the mother denied knowing about the appointment — which was sent to her via text message — claiming she never saw it despite still using her phone. In her police interview, which was played to the court, the woman told officers that after injecting her daughter, she thought she would either “go peacefully” or end up in hospital. The woman denied trying to previously kill her daughter. In his evidence, Dr Pieter Austin, who is serving a jail term for the attempted murder of the little girl because he supplied the mum with two prescriptions of insulin, said she had confessed to attempting to kill her daughter before by trying to smother her with a pillow and Glad Wrap. He said the mother came to him wanting a “humane” way to end her daughter’s life because she was at “her wits end”, so he wrote her the prescriptions. The woman denied either event ever happened, claiming she never specifically asked for the diabetic medication and went to see him on December 13, 2021, about giving her the hepatitis B vaccine. She testified she believed her daughter, who has a rare condition that has left her with severe cerebral palsy and unable to walk, talk or eat properly, had been mistakenly injected with the vaccine at birth because she suffered from a side effect linked to the jab. She said she wanted to create a medical emergency using the hepatitis B vaccination, but the doctor refused and suggested the insulin. The woman, who was granted bail and faces up to 20 years in prison, will be sentenced in August.