Sharon Mills, 33, whose five-year-old son Mason Jones died in 2005 after contracting E. coli O157, told the public inquiry in Wales today that she was devastated when she learned he had the bug.

In her statement to the inquiry, Ms Mills said,

"When Mason was hallucinating he said to me, ‘Mamma, I’m dying.’ Mason had never been a child who had ever talked about death – his words therefore hit me for six. You could see it in Mason’s eyes that when he said these words he meant what he was saying. That was the first time that I began to form a deep-rooted feeling that Mason could die. I tried to reassure him and talked about things like how many children he was going to have when he got older. I told him that the doctors and nurses were going to make him better. This night was the worst of my life. …

"He was a beautiful child and I couldn’t understand why this had happened. When Mason passed away I felt numb. I felt as if I were looking at someone else’s child. I thought that it couldn’t be Mason lying there. It was unreal. I felt that I was having a nightmare and that I couldn’t wake up. I have felt like that ever since. Returning home without Mason felt as if my life had ended."