Woman tried to murder toddler by giving her anti-depressants and pain killers

A woman who tried to murder a toddler by repeatedly giving her adult medication has been warned she could face a life sentence for her “breathtakingly wicked” crime.

Laura Docherty dosed the little girl with antidepressants and pain-killing drugs, resulting in her needing to be resuscitated and placed on a ventilator during the abuse.

Docherty, 35, formerly of Glenrothes, in Fife, denied attempting to murder the infant during an earlier trial but was unanimously convicted by a jury of the murder bid by assaulting her to the danger of her life.

She gave the child Amitriptyline, Propranolol and Dihydrocodeine on various occasions between April 2021 and February 2023 at a house in Edinburgh, the city’s Royal Hospital for Children and Young People and elsewhere.

As a result of taking the medication the girl, who was aged two when the offending began, suffered seizures and episodes of reduced consciousness.

The victim was admitted to hospital and was subjected to “unnecessary medical investigations and procedures”, the attempted murder charge stated.

A judge ordered that a full risk assessment report should be prepared on Docherty, which can lead to the imposition of an Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR)

Under an OLR the court sets a minimum jail term the offender must serve but when, and if, they are ever released is a decision for the parole authorities.

Judge Michael O’Grady KC said at the High Court in Edinburgh: “Her actions were utterly reckless and breathtakingly wicked.”

The judge said Docherty was manipulative and cunning and added: “Time and again she deceived doctors and nurses and social workers and showed considerable guile.”

He said: “It is a statement of the obvious that this is a highly unusual, deeply concerning and very anxious case.”

Mr O’Grady said that Docherty continued to deny the offence and has shown no insight and no remorse. The judge added: “She considers she is the victim.”

The judge said he was left with concerns about the risk that she may pose in future. He said: “My concerns may be unfounded and the risks may not exist, but given the extraordinary circumstances of this case I am bound to consider this in the context of an OLR.”

The judge said the survival of the child owed “absolutely nothing to the accused” but was down to the considerable skill of doctors and paramedics.

He earlier said following the guilty verdict that it appeared from some of the evidence that Docherty had “a troubled and unhappy life” and added: “No doubt at least some of that will not be of your making.”

He told her: “But it is difficult to see that anything could adequately explain or justify what you have done to the child.”

He said: “Whatever your own trials and tribulations, whatever the turmoil in your own life, what you did to the child was utterly wicked.”

“It is impossible to forget the sight of a young child – who should have been in the flower of her childhood – prone in the back of an ambulance, desperately struggling to breathe, desperately struggling to hang on by a thread to life,” said the judge.

Mr O’Grady said she was willing to throw away that life “for nothing more than the drama of the moment and the attention you seem to seek at every turn”.

“You must have understood the pain, the fear and the misery you inflicted on this child; indeed you saw and heard it with your own eyes and ears,” he told Docherty.

The court heard that a report prepared on Docherty had concluded that she has an emotionally unstable personality disorder.

Defence counsel Simon Gilbride said: “It is clearly a very troubling case.” He said a report prepared on her showed she had experienced “significant childhood trauma”

The judge continued the sentencing of Docherty, who followed proceedings via a TV link to prison, to June 16 for the preparation of the risk assessment report.