A SHOCKED Barnsley community is rallying round a devoted mum who found her eight-month-old baby daughter dead in her cot at the weekend.

Kerry Owens, 21, went to check on Lillie-May Walls on Friday morning and discovered she was trapped between the mattress and the side of her cot, it is believed she suffocated.

Friends of the Darfield mum, who also has a three-year-old son Chad, say she is inconsolable with grief and tormented by thoughts of 'what if.'

Kerry, of Rose Avenue, is too shaken to talk about the tragedy but has asked neighbours Sue and Ian Marsden to speak on her behalf.

Sue says Lillie-May, who was playing happily in the garden on the day before she died, was a healthy baby who could not have wished for a better mum.

She said: “Kerry can’t stop saying 'what if', but no-one could have done anything about this.

“Kerry is a young mum but she's a good mum and there are women in their 30s who could learn from her, she never goes out, her kids are her whole life. “They were so well behaved other mums asked her if she could get their children to be more like hers.”

Kerry is now staying with a friend because she cannot bear to live in her own home because of the memories it evokes.

Sue said: “Everywhere she looks she can see Lillie-May. We are trying to sort out the things that need to be done but I don’t know how we can help her because unless you have lost a child there is no way you can understand what she is going through.”

• Detectives have launched an investigation into the circumstances which led to the death four-month-old Abbie Winfield Jones. The tot, of Kingwell Crescent, Ward Green, who suffered from Downs' Syndrome, died in hospital two weeks ago amid fears of a medication mix-up. A post-mortem was carried out on Monday but further tests are needed and could take weeks. Barnsley Primary Care Trust is also investigating Abbie’s death. Inquests into both babies’ deaths have not yet been opened.