Paris Mayo (left) arrives at Worcester Crown Court ahead of her trial (Picture: PA)
The brother of a woman accused of killing her own newborn son said he had a feeling ‘something wasn’t right’, a court has heard.
Paris Mayo, 19, was 15 when she is accused of killing baby Stanley and putting his body in a bin bag at her family home in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire.
She’s alleged to have covered up both the pregnancy and birth, before assaulting the newborn and forcing cotton wool down his throat on March 23 2019.
Her brother George Mayo, who is now 20 but was 16 at the time, told Worcester Crown Court that on the day in question his sister was ‘complaining of pain’.
When judge Mr Justice Garnham asked if he was told anything about the pain’s cause, Mr Mayo replied: ‘To me, 16 years old, it was a lady thing – I didn’t want nothing to do with it.’
He described how Mayo had her second bath of the day at around 9pm, when he left the house to run an errand, and he returned home at around 10.30pm.
Both their parents were upstairs as his father Patrick – who died just 10 days after the birth – was having home dialysis.
Mayo told Mr Mayo that she had ‘bled heavily’ in the sitting room and she asked him not to come in.
Paris Mayo was 15 at the time of the incident (Picture: Facebook)
She told him she would clean up the mess herself.
Mr Mayo took a cup of tea to his sister at around midnight before going to bed, but told jurors: ‘I didn’t sleep very well. I had a feeling something wasn’t right.’
The next morning he woke up to a message from Mayo asking him to take a black bin bag, ‘full of sick from last night’, outside.
Mr Mayo described the bin bag as unusually heavy and said when he lifted it there were ‘streaks of blood’ on the doorstep. His mother was also outside.
Prosecution lawyer Mr Hankin KC asked: ‘Did you (then) turn to see your mother on the doorstep, opening the unusually heavy and blood-stained bag?
‘What was her reaction?’
Mr Mayo replied ‘she just went hysterical,’ snapping his fingers for emphasis.
She claims she didn’t know she was pregnant (Picture: PA)
When asked if he knew his sister was pregnant, Mr Mayo said: ‘I didn’t have any idea at all.
‘I had noticed she had put on some weight, but thought that was down to our family… we’re all big boned in our family.’
Mr Mayo was then questioned by Mayo’s lawyer who asked about their father’s character. He described his father as ‘not an easy person’, ‘controlling at times’, ‘fair but old-fashioned’, and someone who could be ‘horribly cruel with words’.
He agreed there was pressure on him and Mayo to help as much as they could around the house, and that ‘treading on eggshells’ around their father had ‘damaged’ both he and his sister’s mental health.
The Crown believes Stanley suffered a fractured skull, which could have been caused by Mayo’s foot on his head, before she stuffed five pieces of cotton wool into his mouth.
Mayo, of Ruardean, Gloucestershire, denies wrongdoing and the trial continues.
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‘I didn’t sleep very well. I had a feeling something wasn’t right.’