‘Mercy-killer’ in bid for freedom
A DEVOTED mother jailed for life after giving her brain-damaged son a fatal dose of heroin to end his “living hell”, yesterday launched a bid to overturn her murder conviction.
Trainee nurse Frances Inglis, 58, was ordered to serve a minimum of nine years in prison in January.
She had described her son Thomas’s death as a “mercy killing” carried out with “love in her heart”.
Thomas, 22, was so severely disabled he could only communicate by blinking and squeezing his hands after being injured falling from a moving ambulance in July 2007.
His mother refused to believe doctors who said he could recover, saying he should be allowed to die.
At her trial she said she had “no choice” but to end his “living hell” and “couldn’t leave my child like that”.
Yesterday Mrs Inglis, of Dagenham, east London, whose family have stood by her, was in court to hear her barrister Alan Newman QC tell the Court of Appeal in London that she believed her son was terrified and in “constant pain”.
When she had made a previous attempt to take his life at Queen’s Hospital, Romford, doctors managed to resuscitate him.
But in May 2008 she slipped past staff at a nursing home in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, and give him a lethal dose of the drug as he lay in bed.
She then barricaded his door with superglue, a wheelchair and oxygen tank as staff fought to get in and save his life.
Mr Newman said: “In her eyes what she did was end his life in a calm and peaceful way and not one that would cause him pain, suffering and agony.”
The court’s decision will be announced later.