PARENTS of a three-year-old who died when a chain got wrapped around her neck on a slide have spoken of their heartache.

An inquest yesterday (July 29) heard how Ivy Gibson, of Sedgefield, in County Durham, died as a result of an accident while playing in the garden at home.

The youngster had been in the care of her grandmother when tragedy struck in March this year.

Her grief-stricken mother and father, Laura Hardy and Michael Gibson, told The Northern Echo the inquiry's finding was what they expected and came as a relief.

Miss Hardy said: “As long as people know it was an accident and we’re not bad parents. We loved her (Ivy) a lot and she was a lovely little girl. It has broken our hearts and we’ve tried to stay strong for her older sister Miley.”

Mr Gibson added: "We both went to work that day, a normal day, and the next thing we know we were a daughter short."

The inquest at Crook Civic Centre heard how on the morning of March 21 Ivy's grandmother Karen Hardy arrived at the family's house as she did regularly to look after the her.

Mrs Hardy told the court the pair of them spent the day playing while she did odd jobs to help out - with Ivy seeming "well" and "happy" despite being a "bit poorly".

In the afternoon the grandmother said she turned her back for "less than a minute" only to look back to find Ivy unconscious on the slide in the garden.

She described the panic that ensued – picking up the little girl, taking her inside to perform CPR and calling paramedics who tried but were unable to save her life.

An investigation was launched which suggested a beaded chain from a blind cord had been around her neck at the time of her death.

Although the metal chain went unnoticed by her grandmother and other paramedics, it was spotted by one paramedic and a piece of it, believed to have caught in her hair, was produced at hospital.

A post-mortem examination found the medical cause of death to be pressure on her neck, which was left with marks that matched the chain.

How the chain came to be around her neck remains unknown.

Senior coroner for County Durham and Darlington, Andrew Tweddle, said he with a police officer and doctor attempted to reconstruct the scene, and though it was difficult, agreed that "it could and did happen".

Recording a conclusion of accidental death, Mr Tweddle said: “It wasn’t planned or deliberate, it was just one of those rare things where everything fell into the wrong place at the wrong time."