Jailed for four years, cannabis smoking mother who downed vodka and chatted as her baby drowned in the bath

When her one-year-old son was pulled limp and lifeless from an overfilled bath, drunken Danielle Reeves screamed with rage and blamed those around her.

She lied to paramedics and even said her other son – aged only three – was responsible for the tragedy.

But as she was jailed for almost four years yesterday, the young mother of two had to face up to the fact that just one person was truly to blame: herself.

Reeves had left little Frankie Joe in the bath, with only his older brother Alfie for company, while she spent 45 minutes chatting with neighbours outside her home in Redhill, Surrey. She told one that she was ‘so drunk’ on vodka.

By the time the mother – a foul-mouthed, binge-drinking, cannabis-smoking 24-year-old – thought to check on her sons, the water in the bath was full to the overflow.

Frankie died in hospital four days later, the day after his first birthday.

Yesterday Reeves, who admitted manslaughter when she appeared in court last month, broke into choking sobs as she was sentenced.

‘You totally abandoned your responsibilities as the mother of a baby at bathtime,’ said Judge Christopher Critchlow.

‘You completely overlooked the risk to him of being unattended and not just for a moment or two, but for a very long time.’

Compounding her neglect, Reeves repeatedly lied, first to paramedics whom she reduced to tears with her display of anger, then to other members of the emergency team, claiming she had left the children for just a few minutes.

Today, as she begins her 45-month sentence, the Mail can reveal the extent of her feckless behaviour.

Her appearance at Guildford Crown Court yesterday was by no means her first brush with the law. Six years ago, a sobbing Reeves, then only 18, stood in the dock at the Old Bailey charged with murder. She was accused, with two 17-year-old boys, of beating a trainee fitness instructor to death, while another man filmed the attack on his mobile phone.

Reeves was jailed for 45 months at Guildford Crown Court, pictured above, for manslaughter of her son Frankie-Joe after she left him and his brother Alfie unsupervised in a bath for up to 50 minutes

Reeves was said to have encouraged Andrew Elvin and Caine Hallett, who kicked and punched Luke Salisbury, 30, to death, then stripped him naked and left his body in a rubbish-strewn hallway.

Elvin was found guilty of murder and Hallett of manslaughter.

Reeves, who claimed she tried to stop the attack, was cleared of murder and the jury failed to reach a verdict on an alternative count of manslaughter. The prosecution subsequently dropped the case.

In the aftermath, the teenage Reeves was forced to leave the housing association semi in Epsom, Surrey, where she lived with single mother Dawn, 44, moving to nearby Banstead. Stability appeared to beckon for Reeves when she met her partner, whom the Mail cannot name for legal reasons. The couple already had Alfie when they moved to the flats in Redhill in late 2009.

But Reeves swiftly upset neighbours and was often heard shouting. Alfie was once even seen wandering through a car park, alone and wearing only a vest.

‘She was always smoking drugs, cannabis,’ said a neighbour who did not want to be named.

‘She would come over swearing and shouting. I had to call the police on her so many times.

‘Most of the time she was living here I felt I couldn’t stay here, I went to my mum’s quite a lot.

‘It’s pretty much all drink-related. I’ve seen her outside smoking cannabis before and even with the windows closed you could smell it. She was smoking cannabis on the day she brought the baby home.’

The scene: Reeves left her sons alone in a bath in a block of flats in Redhill, Surrey, pictured above, to drink wine with her neighbours

The neighbour was at home on the day in September last year that the tragedy happened.

It was mid-afternoon when the woman spotted Reeves’s partner leave, and heard her chatting with another neighbour.

She recalled: ‘When she first came out she said, “I’m so drunk.” I said, “Have you been drinking wine?” and she said, “No, vodka, I’ve had so much vodka”. We kept hearing Alfie screaming and she kept shouting, “Sit down Alfie, sit down”.’

Puzzled, she asked if the little boy was trying to climb over the stairgate, but was told by Reeves the toddler was in the bath.

‘Frankie was never mentioned  and I just thought he would be sleeping,’ she said. ‘It didn’t cross my mind that he was in the bath too.’ Incredibly, the neighbour heard Reeves shout instructions  to Alfie to turn the shower on to amuse himself.

‘It wasn’t until about 40 minutes later that she said she was going to get Alfie out of the bath and dressed, and went in.

‘About 15 seconds later she slung the back door open and was screaming my name with the baby over her shoulder. She literally threw him to me.

‘We had the baby on the kitchen floor. She said he’d had a fit, she didn’t tell us he was in the bath. His lips were blue, his eyes were slightly open and we were pumping his chest and doing mouth-to-mouth.

‘It was only later we saw the bath and it was full to the overflow.’

As panic ensued, Alfie remained in the bath, and it was another neighbour who scooped the boy from the water.

When emergency services arrived one ambulance crew member was left so distressed by the screaming Reeves that she said: ‘I couldn’t work out if she was distressed, shocked or just plain horrible.’

Tellingly, the response of Reeves’s brother when he arrived at the hospital was: ‘Was she p*****?’

Another resident of the flats claimed social services had been told of the mother’s cannabis smoking.

So what of Reeves now? Her mother Dawn had a sharp retort when approached by a Mail reporter. ‘Do one,’ she said, giving some insight into where her daughter got her unpleasant tongue.

Meanwhile back in Redhill, Aneesa Shukkore, who has lived in Reeves’s three-storey block for 22 years, told the Mail: ‘I will never forget that day. The ambulance came and she [Reeves] looked up at me and said, “It’s all your fault”.

‘I don’t know why she said it. But the policeman who came said to me, “Don’t worry, she just wanted to blame somebody”. ’