Toddler drowns in seven inches of water after falling in a bin

Jack Thorne toppled into the 2ft-high bin and drowned in seven and a half inches of water after he was unable to pull himself out.

His mother Nicola, 33, told an inquest how she had been playing with Jack next to the rabbit hutch in their garden on April 20 while his two brothers, aged six and eight, watched television inside.

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She decided to pop into the house to phone her mother but the call went unanswered.

She said: "I wasn't that long but when I went back outside to the rabbit hutch Jack wasn't there."

Choking back tears, Miss Thorne described how she frantically searched for her son for about ten minutes, scouring the garden and checking every room of the house in Weeke, near Winchester, Hampshire.

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She enlisted the help of one of her sons, Jordan, who was looking upstairs when he shouted that he could see Jack outside "playing in the water" at the bin, which was next to a rarely-used pathway.

She said: "I picked him straight out, I put my arm round his waist and yanked him out.

"He was all blue, I took his cardie off because it was full of water and I got him on the kitchen floor."

She alerted a neighbour and they tried to resuscitate Jack.

Paramedics then took over and the boy was taken to the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester, where he was pronounced dead later that evening.

Describing her son, Miss Thorne said: "Jack was always mobile, from three months on he had a baby walker and from 12 months he started walking himself."

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Detective Sergeant Paula Myers told the inquest at Winchester that there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.

She said Jack must have fallen into the bin, which was slightly lower than the pathway it was next to.

She said: "If Jack had got his head and top part of his body into the bin he would have naturally rolled in.

"Going in head-first he probably wouldn't have been able to lift his body weight out."

Central Hampshire Coroner Grahame Short recorded a verdict of accidental death caused by drowning. He said: "Unfortunately it wasn't possible to find him for something like ten minutes, by which time he had already been immersed in the water for some considerable time.

"The amount of water in this small dustbin was relatively small. This was a tragic accident."

He told Miss Thorne: "I would like to give my deepest sympathies.

"All parents can identify with the difficulties you had and the sheer panic you must have felt when you realised Jack was missing and was discovered in these circumstances. I would like to say how sorry I am."