A mother allegedly killed her five-year-old son on New Year’s Eve with a fatal dose of anti-depressants after becoming ‘angry’ and ‘bitter’ when she broke up with his father, a court has heard.
Claire Scanlon, 38, is accused of beating her son Dylan before giving him a fatal dose – nine times the amount needed to kill an adult – of an anti-depressant called Mirtazapine, which had been prescribed to her.
Scanlon has claimed that Dylan took her anti-depressant medication by himself. She denies charges of murder and child cruelty.
Dylan was found dead at the family home on Elm Road, Limeside, Oldham around 6:20pm on December 31 last year.
Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court heard how Scanlon had run out of the address to her uncle’s house opposite minutes earlier to say that Dylan wasn’t breathing or moving.
She had also called Dylan’s father, Gary Keenan, to tell him their son was unresponsive.
Dylan was found lifeless on the double bed in the main bedroom with ‘significant’ bruising on his head and body
Dylan was found dead at the family home in Oldham around 6:20pm on December 31 last year
Dylan was found lifeless on the double bed in the main bedroom with ‘significant’ bruising on his head and body.
Lisa Wilding, KC, prosecuting, told the jury these injuries were not responsible for Dylan’s death, as toxicology reports later revealed he had been poisoned with the drug.
‘The prosecution say that Claire Scanlon took the ultimate step to take Dylan away from her ex partner’, she told the jury.
‘She deliberately fed him the drug that killed him. In her anger she also beat Dylan with sufficient force to bruise muscles on both sides of his head and across his face.’
Ms Wilding said Scanlon had become ‘angry and depressed’ following the breakdown of her relationship with Mr Keenan after he went to live with another woman while ‘she struggled emotionally, practically and financially as a single parent’.
The court heard that she bombarded him with messages and voicemails in the weeks before Dylan’s death.
In one voicemail on December 15, 2022, she said: ‘I promise you, you won’t see him again. You’ll se. Bye. Go and enjoy your life’.
Scanlon has claimed that Dylan took her anti-depressant medication by himself
Another message, on December 27, 2022, said: ‘I promise you now, carry on treating me like a d***head, I promise you’re never gonna see my son again’ and ‘treat me like a d*** I’ll stop you from going near him’.
Ms Wilding told the court a note later found by police in a bedroom drawer suggested that Scanlon had ‘planned for both she and Dylan to die’.
The note read: ‘Don’t let them see us, just cremate us. All this could have been avoided if Gary and all his family left us alone.’
Police also recovered empty packets of the drug from the family home, and black bin bags containing hundreds of baby pictures of Dylan that had been taken from photo albums.
The court heard that Scanlon’s five-year relationship with Mr Keenan ended in December 2020. Her family described her as being ‘bitter’ about the break-up and ‘obsessed’ with Mr Keenan.
Her older son Shawn Scanlon had helped her, but when he went to live with a girlfriend two months before Dylan died, she was left to care for him alone.
Scanlon, who has been diagnosed with neurological illness Huntingdon’s disease, and has a history of depression and anxiety, told Shawn she had stopped taking anti-depressant medication around five months earlier.
Floral tributes were left outside the Oldham home where Dylan was found
But she collected a repeat prescription of Mirtazapine in December 2021 and became more ‘isolated and reclusive’, restricting Dylan’s contact with others, including his father, and rejecting his Christmas presents.
Ms Wilding told the court that Scanlon had become ‘more angry and upset’ after receiving letters from Mr Keenan’s solicitors about him having access to their son.
The day before his death, she sent Mr Keenan a message that read: ‘Well I’ve emailed your solicitor again.
‘Telling him you still ain’t even bothered. And you’re just showing Gary, all you want to do is act like me and Dyl weren’t in your life and crack on, make a new life with your new bird.
‘So you go and do that. I’ll solve it for you. Go and enjoy your new life with her. And remember you chose your slag.’
Scanlon told neighbours and paramedics that Dylan’s injuries, which included 64 bruises and abrasions to his head and body, were caused by him falling from a step ladder, and said he seemed fine 15 minutes before she found him unresponsive.
But an expert has suggested the injuries were ‘non accidental’, the jury heard, and were caused by ‘blows or his body impacting on a hard surface’.
The trial, expected to last until July, is being heard at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court
Dylan had 9,950 micrograms per litre of the drug in his body. Ms Wilding told the jury that had Dylan taken the pills by himself, it ‘would have been obvious’ to Scanlon that her son needed medical attention, given that he would have become drowsy, unresponsive, and his breathing would have changed.
It is alleged that Scanlon told a member of staff at the Edenfield Centre, a mental health unit where she was detained after Dylan’s death, that she killed Dylan, Ms Wilding said.
While being questioned by police, Scanlon is also said to have telephoned Mr Keenan and told him: ‘This is all you f****** fault’.
The trial, expected to last until July, continues.
