'When I heard Albie was dead, I thought it was a sick joke'

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Albie Speakman's mum has told how she thought it was a 'joke' when she was first told her three year-old son had died. Albie - who Leah Bridge calls her 'sunshine boy' - died in July, 2022, after he was hit by a defective farm machine in Bury being operated by his dad, Neil Speakman, who was last week cleared by a jury of gross negligence manslaughter after a trial.

Leah told movingly of the unimaginable moment he called her and told her to get to hospital. "It just feels like it happened yesterday," said Leah, 31, in an exclusive interview with the Manchester Evening News. "It feels like I've stood still in time and I don't go anywhere.

I don't move forward in my mind. I haven't moved on anywhere from it. I think 'what might he have seen? What might he have said?

Was he scared?' I don't know because I wasn't there." Leah separated from Mr Speakman shortly after Albie was born. The tragedy happened in a yard next to a small garden area at the front of a farmhouse on Bentley Hall Road, Walshaw, where a few minutes earlier he had left Albie to play with their two pet dogs, jurors were told.