A woman has been acquitted of encouraging her boyfriend to shoot a crying child in the head with an air rifle pellet.
A jury took 35 minutes to find Emma Horseman, 24, not guilty of unlawfully and maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm on 18-month-old Harry Studley.
Horseman’s boyfriend, Jordan Walters, previously admitted the same charge.
Horseman was accused of telling Walters: “Shoot Harry, just to frighten him, to shut him up, shoot it at Harry,” as the boy – the son of a friend – cried at their flat in Bristol in July last year.
During the two-day trial Horseman told the court that Harry was injured while she was chatting with Harry’s mother, Amy Allen.
She said: “I couldn’t see what Jordan was doing. All I know was that he was cleaning the gun. I know he had the gun out but I couldn’t see him.”
She denied telling Walters to shoot Harry, telling the jury: “I can’t remember saying that.”
Paul Cook, defending, asked Horseman: “What was the first you knew about the gun being fired?”
She replied: “I didn’t even know it was. I just looked down and looked up and saw Harry was bleeding. That’s all that I can remember. Harry was sat on his mum’s lap.
“Jordan said to Amy: ‘What do I do?’ and Amy said: ‘Ring the ambulance,’ and that’s what he did. There was lots of ambulances arriving. It just happened so fast. I just remember Harry bleeding and the police turning up. I can’t remember anything else.”
Asked how she felt about the incident, Horseman replied: “Horrible, I felt bad, sick … like that could have been my child.”
Harry underwent emergency surgery at Bristol children’s hospital. He had suffered a displaced skull fracture and swelling and bleeding on the brain after being shot in the right temple.
The pellet has not been found. The boy, now two, has several post-traumatic seizures each day and is being treated with anticonvulsant drugs.
Jurors were not told that Harry had been left blinded in one eye as a result of his head injury.
Horseman did not comment as she was driven away from court by members of her family.
Walters will be sentenced at a later date.
