

A mother who killed her baby daughter by burning her with a hairdryer has been jailed for six years.
Courtney Gartshore, 28, used the appliance to subject three-month-old Dahlia-Rose to “significant and sustained heat” on her head and body.
Emergency services were called to the scene at a property in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, in September 2023, but the child had died.
Gartshore was convicted of culpable homicide – the closest equivalent to manslaughter in Scots Law – following a trial at the High Court in Aberdeen in July.
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Sentencing Gartshore at the High Court in Edinburgh, judge Simon Collins KC told her, external she had inflicted “severe and disfiguring” burns on her daughter.
He said: “Given Dahlia-Rose’s very young age, and the horrifying way that she died, this is a uniquely disturbing and distressing case.
“But it is tragic as well as terrible. And that is because the evidence suggested that the accused loved Dahlia-Rose, yet will have to live the rest of her life with the knowledge that she was responsible for her death.”
