A TEENAGE heroin addict accused of letting her baby half-brother die of a methadone overdose told a jury she was not to blame for his death.

Claire Gormley, 19, said her confession that she had seen 22-month-old Jacksa Bowyer holding a methadone bottle and had not told anyone was a lie - made up as a result of pressure from her mother, Jaquietta Bowyer.

Gormley said a contradictory statement made in December last year, in which she said Bowyer had known Jacksa had swallowed the lethal dose of methadone the day before he died, was the truth.

"My first memory of that day was being woken up by Jaqui saying Jack had drunk methadone," said Gormley, adding that Bowyer had later offered her a swig of the drug from the same bottle, bought by Bowyer two days earlier.

"She didn't say how much he had taken, and I didn't know methadone could kill you," she added.

She said that, against her advice, Jaquietta Bowyer had not taken Jacksa to the hospital, even though he had become 'tired and floppy'.

Gormley, Jaquietta Bowyer, 39, and her husband Luke Bowyer, 27, have all pleaded not guilty to manslaughter.

They are accused of being responsible for Jacksa's death by neglecting to get treatment for him after he swallowed the lethal dose of methadone in June last year.

Gormley told the jury Jacksa's parents took the baby to their bedroom at around 6.30pm on June 4, and the next time Gormley saw him was when she was woken up by her mother screaming that the baby was dead at 2am.

During her evidence, Gormley described how last year, she and her mother had only just been getting to know each other as Gormley had spent most of her life with other family members or in care.

She told how she had come to Basingstoke three weeks before Jacksa's death because her boyfriend had hit her, and in a bid to try to get off heroin.

The case continues.