'I will regret it till the day I die'

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The accidental shooting that tore apart the family of Natasha Peniston was a tragedy waiting to happen in a community scarred by guns, crime and poverty
The house where I meet Natasha Peniston has a jumbled, lived-in feel, and the children's drawings on the walls form a poignant backdrop to the tale she unfolds. She says the "safe" accommodation social services found for her doesn't feel safe, and that she cannot bear to return to the council house where, earlier this year, her family were crushed by tragedy.
She is thin and says she has lost 13kg (2st) since the incident. She looks younger than her 33 years, except for her eyes, which have seen too much for their time. As we spoke, she was waiting to be sentenced for possessing the firearm that killed her 12-year-old daughter, Kamilah. The trigger was pulled by her son, Kasha, then aged 16. Peniston looks directly at me and says she wants to tell the truth because "as bad as it is, it is the truth".
That the death was accidental is not in dispute, but most people, on learning that the mother had allowed a loaded handgun to be hidden in the family's garden, would question her parental fitness. Most people, however, do not live in environments where guns and threats of violence are part of the background. That Peniston made a gross error of judgment is also not a matter for debate, but perhaps it is relevant that she was trapped in a hard, unforgiving place.
Last week, Peniston was jailed for three years and Kasha, now 17, received a two-year term in a young offender institution. The judge accepted that the killing was a "dreadful accident", brought about because Kasha had been playing with the gun. Passing sentence, he said he would not impose the mandatory jail terms - five years for the mother, three for the son - because there were "exceptional circumstances" to the case and the pair had sustained the lifelong punishment of the loss of a daughter and "well loved sister". He accepted that both were "horrified and truly contrite".
On the evening of April 30, Peniston was on a coach, returning from London. She had left Manchester at seven in the morning to attend a funeral. On the journey home, she had phoned and been assured that her family were well. Home was Gorton, east Manchester, and her family consisted of seven-year-old twin girls, Keira and Kwamaela, 12-year-old Kamilah, and Kasha, who was in charge of his three sisters. Peniston says she had no qualms about leaving her son to look after the three girls: "He thought the world of his sisters and would look after them at the drop of a hat."
Then came the call, from a friend, telling her there had been an accident with a gun at home and that Kamilah had been badly injured. The nightmare that had been at the back of her mind was now a terrible reality. Peniston knew there was a gun at her house. It belonged to a man she knew, her former boyfriend, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and it had been buried in her garden for several days.