Two-year-old girl 'fell through gap in barrier' from fourth floor

Jurors were told details about the death of Ryaheen Banimuslem at the North Bank apartments, in Sheffield city centre Photo: ROSS PARRY AGENCY By Agencies

1:27PM GMT 27 Jan 2014

A two-year-old girl fell to her death from the fourth floor of an apartment block after a maintenance worker failed to replace a glass panel he had removed from a barrier, a jury has been told.

Jurors were told details about the death of Ryaheen Banimuslem at the North Bank apartments, in Sheffield city centre, as the trial opened of maintenance worker Robert Warner, 45.

Bryan Cox QC, prosecuting, said Ryaheen had been playing in an outdoor garden area on the fourth floor of the block with her mother and others when she strayed along a walkway.

At the end of the walkway, Mr Cox told Sheffield Crown Court, there was a gap in the barrier because a glass panel had been removed by Warner.

''She made her way along the walkway to the point where the panel had been removed,'' the prosecutor told the jury of seven men and five women.

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''She passed through the gap in the barrier and fell to her death.

''There was nothing to prevent her from walking or running off the end of the walkway, as she plainly did.

''This accident was caused by the defendant's negligent conduct.

''In essence, the prosecution contend that he removed the barrier from the walkway and failed to replace it.

''He did nothing to prevent access to the walkway thereby creating a very dangerous situation.

''He did nothing to warn of the obvious dangers.''

Mr Cox said Warner had removed the panel some days before the tragedy.

He said he did this to replace another panel which had been smashed in in a more prominent position on the barrier.

Mr Cox told the jury how Warner "stood to gain financially" from replacing one panel with another.

The prosecutor said this was because the defendant submitted an invoice to ARIM (Allsop Residential Investment Management) - the firm which managed the building - claiming he had bought a glass panel.

Mr Cox told the jury how Ryaheen was born in Iraq but moved to the UK in 2011 as her father was studying for a PhD in material physics at Sheffield University.

She died almost instantly from her injuries when she fell on June 27, 2012, the jury was told.

Warner, of Shirehall Crescent, Shiregreen, Sheffield, denies a single charge of manslaughter by gross negligence.

The trial, which is expected to last about three weeks, continues.

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Nigella Lawson tells court: 'I would never make my children orphans through drug addiction'

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter

4:30PM GMT 05 Dec 2013

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Nigella Lawson has told a court she would never risk making her children "orphans" by becoming addicted to cocaine or other drugs.

She also denied she kept a stash of cocaine in a box with her late husband's wedding ring as she ended two days of evidence in the fraud trial of two former aides.

Miss Lawson told a jury her ex-husband Charles Saatchi knew she had taken cocaine with her first husband John Diamond during his battle with terminal cancer, and she had never promised him that she would not take drugs again.

On an afternoon when defence barristers repeatedly clashed with Miss Lawson as well as the judge in the case, Miss Lawson was told not to answer whether her children had given her a Mother's Day card with a cannabis "spliff" taped to the front.

Miss Lawson became increasingly emotional and told defence barrister Karin Arden: "If you want to put me on trial, put me on trial, but I cannot think that it's right to have me here as a witness for the Crown and treat me like this."

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Miss Arden suggested to Miss Lawson that her drug use was a "dark, guilty secret" in her marriage.

She replied: "In respect of the cocaine use when my first husband died, Mr Saatchi knew about it." Asked if she made him a promise that "that was the end of it", she replied: "No, I did not make a promise. Mr Saatchi has phoned up newspapers saying a promise had been extracted and broken, it's not true."

The court heard that Miss Lawson had a jewellery box in the shape of a hollowed out book, in which she kept jewellery inherited from her grandmothers and mother and E wedding rings worn by her and Mr Diamond.

Miss Arden said she also kept cocaine in the box, which had at one point been found by her daughter. She said: "I did not."

She also denied that she frequently had a "runny nose" or whites powder around her nose, and that cannabis dealers turned up at her house to sell her drugs.

She said: "I promise you if I took the drugs to the extent you say I would not be standing here today.

"You know as well as I do that regular cocaine users don't look like this, they're scrawny. If you think I'm going to sabotage my health and run the risk of leaving my children orphans you are very wrong."

Miss Arden asked: "Do you agree that you received a Mother's Day card in 2011 or 2012 with a spliff taped to the card saying 'To enjoy later'?"

Judge Robin Johnson stepped in and told Miss Arden: "That ends your cross-examination. I'm not having any more. You have exhausted my patience."

He told Miss Lawson not to answer the question.

Earlier, Miss Lawson rejected the suggestion that she allowed a former aide to "spend, spend, spend" on a company credit card when she and Charles Saatchi sold their home for £25 million.

Francesca Grillo is accused of fraudulently spending £580,000 on the credit card, which Miss Lawson described as "disgusting, greedy".

She said it was "totally implausible" that she would allow Miss Grillo to spend as much on clothes for a "treat" in one transaction as some people spend on a car.

Karin Arden, defending Miss Grillo, who denies fraud, suggested to Miss Lawson that she loosened the family purse strings when she and Mr Saatchi put their home in Eaton Square, west London, on the market for £37m.

Miss Arden suggested that Miss Lawson had allowed Miss Grillo to spend £5,205 on a jacket and dresses in Miu Miu as a reward for all her hard work keeping the house clean for prospective buyers to see it.

"You told her to buy them on the credit card because she deserved it," Miss Arden suggested.

"Five thousand pounds?! Why on earth would I do that?" Miss Lawson replied. "There are cars that cost that much money."

Miss Arden said: "You were trying to sell the house for £37m, it was giddy money and you told her to treat herself."

Miss Lawson, who said she had not personally profited from the eventual £25m sale of Mr Saatchi's house, rejected this.

Miss Lawson has now finished giving evidence, having spent almost two full days in the witness box.

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'Banjo bobby' promotes safety through song

West Midlands Police Sergeant Giles Dean is hoping his George Formby-style "When I'm Burgling Houses" song will persuade people to keep their homes and cars secure. 3:41PM BST 19 Oct 2013

The policeman wrote the song, which he performs on a banjo-ukulele hybrid called a banjolele, to encourage people to be more careful with their possessions.

Lines from the tongue-and-cheek song include: "Now I go burgling houses to earn a dishonest bob, with all the help you give me it's a very easy job".

Mr Dean explained why the force had produced the song saying, "it was a new and different way to get the crime prevention message out".

"Every week I get across my desk offences, burglaries, thefts from motor vehicles, where people could easily prevent those offences," Mr Dean added.

The police officer, who learnt to play the ukulele five-years-ago, said it was a self-taught hobby which he had learnt mainly through watching videos on YouTube.

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