A woman has been found guilty of killing her baby daughter due to the heat from a hairdryer.
Courtney Gartshore was accused of taking alcohol and the class B stimulant mephedrone while in the “sole care” of three-month-old Dahlia Rose Gartshore at a property in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, on September 30, 2023.
The 27-year-old had denied culpable homicide but was found guilty of causing the child to be subjected to significant and sustained heat on her head and body from the hairdryer.
Dahlia-Rose’s injuries were so severe that she passed away as a result.
A trial at the High Court in Aberdeen heard the 999 call placed by Gartshore, where she claimed that she had woken up that morning to find her daughter, Dahlia-Rose, dead in their home.
Gartshore told the operator: “I just woke up and her head is all purple.”
The operator asked if Dahila-Rose is “beyond help”, to which Gartshore replied “yeah”.
Gartshore went on to tell the operator, “…her skin is peeling off and everything.”
The mum told the operator that the baby had been “perfectly fine” the day before.
Shona Helm, who was one of the first paramedics on the scene, described finding the baby as “distressing”.
She told the court Dahlia-Rose’s hand was “dark grey or black” and “all the skin was peeling off”.
The court had heard from a nearby neighbour who had described hearing Gartshore, with Dahlia-Rose in a pram, shouting near her home in Peterhead hours before the emergency call was made.
The woman told the court she and another neighbour went out to see Gartshore.
She said when she touched Dahlia-Rose’s face and noticed she was “frozen, pure white” and said she had told Gartshore her daughter needed a blanket.
The court also heard that material containing DNA belonging to the baby was found on the nozzle of a hairdryer.
The hairdryer was found in the bedroom of the Gartshores’ home following the baby’s death.