A heart-rending inquest heard how a four-month-old baby boy, born on Christmas Day 2021, tragically died after being left sleeping alone on a toy mat at his family home in Buckfastleigh, Devon. In April 2022, the young Leonidas Ramsden was found unresponsive; the mat in question had explicit safety warnings against leaving babies and toddlers unsupervised on it.
The day before the tragedy, Leonidas was breastfed and laid on his back on the mat placed atop his parents’ mattress on the bedroom floor. His 21 year old mother Chloe, feeling unwell, dozed off on a sofa, requesting the child’s 29 year old father Dudley to monitor their son and eventually settle him into his regular sleeping spot, a Moses basket.
Despite checking on Leonidas at around 3am, Dudley refrained from moving him to avoid disturbance, but both parents inadvertently fell asleep on the sofa. At 6am, Chloe woke to discover her son face-down and not breathing. Distraught, she admitted to the hearing: “It was like a play mat but I just used it as extra comfort while feeding. I knew it was not a safe sleeping scenario and I never left him unattended in it.”
Regrettably, a post-mortem was unable to determine the exact cause of death, though Sudden Unexplained Death in Infancy (SUDI) could not be ruled out, reports The Mirror.
Det Con Donna Tullock expressed her concerns by saying: “We were told it was a sleeping pod but it appeared more like the underneath of a play mat and it did have a warning label on it reading ‘never leave a child under three unattended while using this toy’, so it was not an official sleeping pod.”
Area coroner for Devon, Alison Longhorn, delivered a narrative verdict stating: “Leonidas died having been found in a face down sleeping position while sleeping on a mat. It is likely this position restricted his ability to breathe freely and he was asphyxiated.
“We were told it was a sleeping pod but it appeared more like the underneath of a play mat and it did have a warning label on it reading ‘never leave a child under three unattended while using this toy’, so it was not an official sleeping pod. Leonidas died having been found in a face down sleeping position while sleeping on a mat. It is likely this position restricted his ability to breathe freely and he was asphyxiated.”
