Friends and neighbours have pledged to form a human barrier to prevent a disabled woman's new-born baby being taken into care by officials.

Pregnant Penny Roberts, who was paralysed after plunging 14,000 feet into a concrete runway when a sky-diving trip went wrong, has just four weeks before she gives birth.

She is due to attend a meeting with Bradford council's top social service workers tomorrow in a bid to stop them taking her baby into care when it is born.

Meanwhile, she says people in the village of Steeton near Keighley, where she lives in a specially adapted terraced house, have vowed to picket her home to stop the baby being removed.

She said: "I have had tremendous support from friends and neighbours. They said they will come into the house and physically stop people taking my baby away."

The baby's father, 34-year-old Andrew Mitchell of Portsmouth, who left her when she was 11 weeks pregnant, has demanded custody. But she said: "That will happen over my dead body!

"He is in a fantasy world if he thinks he can have my baby."

Miss Roberts "died" four times before she was stabilised by medics following the horrific plunge in America three years ago. She met Mitchell after he read about her tragedy.

Bradford Council has already threatened to take the row over custody to the High Court and she fears council workers will take the baby into care.

Miss Roberts said: "I am terse. I could have the baby any time because women in my condition tend to go into early labour."

She is full of praise for the staff at Airedale General Hospital, Steeton, where she expects to have the baby and for her GP.

At present she has 24 hour help plus a night sitter because she has been taken off certain drugs.

Bradford Council's assistant director of social services said: "The assessment is continuing and we will hold a meeting with all concerned including Miss Roberts in the foreseeable future."

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