Mother gave son lethal heroin dose

A mother who gave her brain-damaged son a lethal heroin injection to end his suffering has told a jury: "I did it with love in my heart."

Frances Inglis told the Old Bailey she had "no choice" but to give her 22-year-old son a fatal overdose.

Mr Inglis was left in what his mother described as a "living hell" after suffering serious head injuries when he fell out of an ambulance in July 2007.

She told jurors how two months after the accident she gave him an overdose that stopped his heart.

He was revived and she was arrested but she went back and injected him with heroin again in November 2008, and he died.

Inglis, 57, of Dagenham, east London, denies murder and attempted murder.

She said: "I felt he lost his life when he came out of the ambulance. I felt that I was helping, releasing him.

"I don't see it as killing or murder. The definition of murder is to take someone's life with malice in your heart. I did it with love in my heart, for Tom, so I don't see it as murder.

"I knew what I was doing was against the law. I don't know what name they would call it but I knew that the law would say it was wrong. I believed it would have been Tom's choice to have been allowed to die rather than have the intervention to keep him alive."

She shook with sobs as she said: "I had no choice, I had no choice. I would have chosen anything else, I would have done anything else. It is not that I wanted to do it, I had to. I couldn't leave my son there."