Paramedics 'shocked' by starved girl Khyra Ishaq

Jun 6 2009 by Ross McCarthy, Birmingham Mail

PARAMEDICS called to a house in Birmingham were “shocked” to discover the body of an extremely emaciated girl who had died from starvation.

Khyra Ishaq, aged seven, was so thin that she failed to register on medical charts when she was later examined, the city’s Crown Court heard.

It is alleged her death was caused by the deliberate actions of her mother and her mother’s partner who had starved her for weeks and possibly months.

Angela Gordon, 34 and Junaid Abuhamza, 30, have both denied murdering Khyra on May 17 last year, while Gordon has also pleaded not guilty to five charges of child cruelty.

Timothy Raggatt QC, prosecuting, said Gordon and Abuhamza lived in a small house in Leyton Road, Handsworth, and that from December 2007 had, for whatever reason, made a “thorough and determined attempt” to isolate the family from the outside world shunning attempts made by others, including an education welfare officer, to see them.

He said that although the kitchen at the property was well stocked with provisions the supply of food was quite carefully controlled by the defendants and that Khyra and other children at the property were, in effect, prevented from feeding themselves.

Mr Raggatt said if children took food without permission they would be punished.

He said that sometimes a bowl of food would be put on the floor to be shared and that children were given porridge which they ate with their hands.

Gordon and Abuhamza had a duty to look after and care for Khyra but went on: “What they actually did betrayed that duty in every possible sense of that word betrayed.”

Khyra, he said, had not been seen by anyone from the outside world for two months before her death.

He said there was evidence that Gordon had made some attempts to feed and make her daughter drink but on the morning of the 17th it was apparent Khyra was dead and Gordon phoned for an ambulance.

Mr Raggatt said when paramedics arrived Khyra was lying on a mattress upstairs and went on: “Their reaction was, I suspect, much as anyones’ would be. They were shocked.”

He continued: “The body mass index was so low, so dramatically reduced that there was no figure for it in any of the available medical charts that measure human development.”

Mr Raggatt said the defendants had also “starved, assaulted and mistreated” other children in their care, two of whom were found to be severely malnourished to the point where it was dangerous.

He had earlier told the court that Abuhamza had pleaded guilty to charges of cruelty.

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