A MOTHER who stabbed her five-year-old son to death after suffering years of delusions and psychosis has been locked up.

Emma Jackson, of Bromsgrove, Faringdon, showed no emotion throughout her sentencing hearing at Oxford Crown Court.

The 41-year-old had already pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility on March 10 this year.

The court heard as she was told she would not be sent to prison but to a mental health hospital for an indefinite period and that the fatal stabbing of her little boy, Tyler Warmington, had been the result of her paranoid schizophrenia.

During the hearing the court heard that fears over Tyler's wellbeing were first raised after staff at his local primary school noticed his absence on the morning of March 13 last year.

After efforts to contact his mother failed, the court heard, a staff member from the school went to the Faringdon home the following day on March 14 and knocked on the door.

Despite there being no answer, movement was noticed behind a set of curtains and the police were called.

A police community support officer named in court as Arthur Gunn duly arrived at the address and Jackson opened the door covered in blood with various wounds on her neck and wrists, having seemingly injured herself.

Asked where her son Tyler was she told police he was sleeping upstairs.

When more officers attended they discovered Tyler dead in an upstairs bedroom partially covered by a duvet, with 13 stab wounds on his chest and back.

Prosecutor Alan Blake said that there had been evidence of severe force in the blows.

Jackson repeatedly asked officers at the scene if Tyler was still sleeping, the court heard.

She was arrested before she was treated at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

Sentencing, Judge Ian Pringle QC accepted statements from three psychiatrists that she was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, which led to the fatal stabbing of her son.

He said: "This is a tragic case and the reports I have read from three eminent psychologists have a degree of unanimity about them.

"It seems at the time of this act you were suffering paranoid schizophrenia.

"Your life sentence is living with the knowledge that you have killed your son."

She was sentenced under the Mental Health Act to an indefinite period of detention in hospital while she undergoes treatment