The mother of a man accused of throwing his teenage girlfriend from a tower block window has told a jury the young woman "jumped" and that they both rushed to help her.
Court Hears Details of Fourth-Floor Fall
Jordan Herring, aged 22 from Solihull, is on trial at Birmingham Crown Court charged with attempted murder. He denies the allegation that he threw his 18-year-old partner from the fourth-floor window of Merton House in Chelmsley Wood on November 12, 2022. The teenager had to be airlifted to hospital following the fall.
Giving evidence on Tuesday, January 13, Herring's mother, Kerrie-Anne Grogan, said she was asleep in her flat at Merton House when her son woke her. She told the court he said, "come and help me I think she's jumped out of the window".
Mother's Account of the Aftermath
Miss Grogan described going downstairs with her son, picking up the naked teenager, wrapping her in a blanket, and bringing her back upstairs. She rejected the prosecution's suggestion that Herring took her phone to prevent her from calling an ambulance.
Instead, she claimed she often hid her phone in the flat because she was "paranoid" and that both she and her son struggled to locate it for around an hour before the emergency call was made. She denied Herring told her he would go to jail if she dialled 999.
"We didn't speak about it, we just said 'where's the phone? Let's get this girl help. She needs help'," Miss Grogan told the jury. "She has done something of her own accord. All we did was help her, wrapped her up, call an ambulance as soon as we did. Waited 25 minutes or so for the ambulance."
Inconsistencies in Statements Highlighted
Prosecutor Jamie Scott questioned Miss Grogan about her initial 999 call, in which she told the operator Herring had a knife—a detail she repeated in two subsequent police statements. In court, she denied this happened.
Miss Grogan told the jury she has mental health issues and was "tripping" at the time, having consumed alcohol and sleeping tablets before bed. She stated she did not know why she had said certain things to the operator and police.
During cross-examination by Herring's defence counsel, Nicholas Berry, Miss Grogan further claimed the injured teenager told her directly that she had jumped. "I said 'what have you done bab? She said 'I jumped'. I said 'why?' she said 'I don't know why'," Miss Grogan testified.
The jury has been informed that Herring has previously been found guilty of controlling and coercive behaviour against the same teenager. The trial at Birmingham Crown Court continues.
