Jordan Burling trial: what the jury has heard

Jordan Burling, 18, went into cardiac arrest at his
family’s home

The mother, grandmother and sister of a vulnerable teenager who
died weighing less than six stone have appeared in court accused of
his manslaughter.

Jordan Burling, 18, was found by paramedics in the living room
of his house in Farnley, Leeds, in what prosecutor Nicholas Lumley
QC described as a “shocking and disturbing” scene.

“Jordan was lying, utterly helpless, on an inflatable mattress
in a cluttered living room. He was little more than skin and bones,
he weighed 37kg – less than six stones. He wore a soiled nappy
under some pyjamas,” Leeds Crown Court heard.

Opening the case, Lumley said that an expert dietician who had
worked in the area for 26 years “had never seen such
malnutrition… and likened the condition of the body to that found
in World War Two extermination camps”.

Lumley told the court that Burling died from acute
bronchopneumonia, a result of his malnutrition, immobility and
infection-riddled sores.

According to Sky News, Yorkshire Ambulance Service employee
Bridget Shepherd told the court that Burling’s mother, Dawn
Cranston, showed “no emotion” as her son went into cardiac arrest.
Shepherd reportedly said: “She did not seem bothered by what was
going on. She did not seem to be in shock.”

‘Nobody’ responsible

Jurors were told that Burling “had lived a relatively normal
life until he was taken out of school at the age of 16 and
homeschooled by his mother”, reports The Independent.

He was not known to be suffering from an illness or medical
condition that could have caused his rapid decline in health and
eventual death, the court heard.

Burling’s grandmother, Denise Cranston, told police that her
grandson’s health deteriorated about three months prior to his
death, on 30 June 2016.

“He went to the toilet one day and said something had cracked in
his leg. He then decided he wasn’t going to walk,” she told
police.

According to the BBC, she said that following an incident about five
years earlier when Jordan was turned away from a GP surgery because
they arrived “a minute late”, the teenager refused to seek medical
help.

She said: “I think we just got on with it, Dawn and me, we
[carried out Jordan’s care] between us because he wouldn’t
have entertained a doctor.”

Asked by police if she was responsible for her grandson’s death,
she replied “no” and that “nobody” was to blame.

Burling’s estranged father, Steven Burling, told the court that
he last saw his son about six months before his death, and that
Jordan looked  pale and drawn.

According to the Daily Mail, he said that Dawn Cranston had
been “a good mum, a caring mum” in the years they were
together. 

‘Concealing the birth of a child’

The court also heard about the discovery of a baby’s remains in
plastic bags when police searched the family’s home.

It could not be established whether the full-term baby boy,
believed to be the child of Dawn Cranston and Steven Burling, had
been born dead or alive, Lumley said.

“Within what would have been Jordan’s bedroom, officers found a
small rucksack, within which were plastic bags inside plastic
bags,” he added, and the baby’s bones were then discovered in
the “rancid smelling” wrapping. 

Dawn Cranston has pleaded guilty to a charge of concealing birth
of a child by secretly disposing of body.