Police body-worn camera footage revealing Barnack Primary School classroom that Stamford boy Benedict Blythe had allergic reaction in is shown to inquest

Body-worn police camera footage has been shown to an inquest jury examining the circumstances surrounding a five-year-old’s death.

Officers attended the reception classroom at Barnack Primary School, near Stamford, after staff called 999 following the collapse of pupil Benedict Blythe.

Benedict had suffered a severe allergic reaction which, despite resuscitation attempts by school staff, his father, paramedics and hospital staff, proved fatal.

The boy’s parents, Helen and Pete Blythe, had asked that the inquest jury see footage taken from the camera of a police officer who arrived at the school on the morning of Wednesday, December 1, 2021.

The video provided the layout of the reception classroom, with children’s bags and coats hanging on pegs, and drinks bottles on the sink.

As he walks around the classroom, the officer makes verbal notes as he points out discarded leaflets and packaging from two adrenaline auto-injectors, a blue salbutamol asthma inhaler, a resuscitation kit, a defibrillator that had been brought from Barnack Village Hall.

There is also a bowl of vomit on a table alongside a school bag and clothing.

The officer also points the camera at the classroom’s colourful, animal-patterned carpet and says this was where Benedict was lying when officers arrived.

Before being shown the footage, jurors were warned they would see the scene of Benedict’s attempted resuscitation but were reassured that the pupil had been taken to hospital when the officer arrived, and so they would not see him.

The screening of the footage this morning (Wednesday, July 2) began day three of an inquest scheduled to take two weeks at Peterborough Town Hall.

The jury of 11 has already heard from Benedict’s mother and father, who live in Stamford with Benedict’s younger sister, six-year-old Etta.

It has also heard from a consultant paediatrician familiar with Benedict’s allergies to cows’ milk and eggs, and his asthma, which she suggested could have been better controlled through the prescribing of higher strength inhaled medication.

The witness statements of two teaching assistants working in Benedict’s classroom on the morning of his death have also been heard, and through these it was confirmed that Benedict had eaten a McVitie’s gingerbread biscuit during morning break, but that he had not drunk from a carton of oat milk. Both had been brought in from home.

Later today, Benedict’s headteacher Amy Jones and executive head of Barnack Primary School Colette Firth are due to take the witness stand.