Ribbons wave softly in the morning wind. Tied to metal fencing below a banal block of flats - the cream coating applied to the building during a late-noughties renovation has grown dirty and faded - they provide a sombre reminder.
It is just metres away from this fence that 18-month-old Elliot Procter lay dead, nine years ago to this day. Elliot rested on the cobbles just in front of the now-closed ground floor shops at Newcastle House off Barkerend Road in Bradford.
Most of the people now living in the flats are unaware of the tragedy that occurred here on 21 October 2017, a calamity that shocked the community for many months. Memories have faded as inhabitants have moved on, part of the life cycle of social housing. “It was weird for quite some time”, Andy tells me when I first visited, in September. He is one of the few who remain, having lived in his flat for 14 years. “Seeing the ribbons on the fence, every now and then you go past them and you remember.”
Andy’s home is a few doors down from the sixth-floor flat where Elliot’s mother Gemma Procter, then 23, threw him from the window or balcony (the exact details were never publicly revealed) while afflicted with what was described in court as undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. Procter shared the flat with Elliot’s father and their newborn daughter. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility and in June 2018 was handed an indefinite hospital order.
The Exchange can reveal that Procter was released from detention some time last year, a situation that provokes deep frustration and indignation from a member of Elliot’s family who contacted me in April. Since then I’ve been able to trace Procter’s return to the community and heard from a charity founder who is sympathetic to the victims of diminished responsibility deaths as well as a psychologist who has supported the rehabilitation of those who commit violent acts while in the grip of mental illness.
My attempts to reach Procter and her family have resulted in silence.
“Gemma Procter has been released” read the subject line of the email in my inbox earlier this year, when I was working for the Bradford Telegraph & Argus. What was chilling, and made me question the authenticity of the email, was the sender’s address. It was Elliot’s full name.
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