THIS is the moment a brazen woman tried to con staff at a Hampshire shop and falsely claim a dead girl was her daughter.

The woman said she was the mother of Sophie Barringer who died more than ten years ago, but whose name lives on in the Sophie’s Appeal charity.

The incident saw the woman go into the Candy Room sweet shop in Market Street, Eastleigh, where she asked for around £60 from the till, and claimed the manager had promised her the money as it was for her daughter – and pointed to a Sophie’s Appeal charity box.

She claimed her ‘daughter’ was in hospital and she needed the money for a taxi to the hospital.

Staff quickly realised she was trying to con them, and the woman fled the shop before the manager arrived but the incident has left the mother of Sophie Barringer shocked.

Lin Barringer, 59, from Eastleigh, described the woman as the “lowest of the low”.

She said: “Trying to claim Sophie was her daughter is a disgrace. It’s a wicked, disgusting thing to do; she knew nothing about Sophie. She claimed she wanted to visit Sophie in hospital.

“Little did she know Sophie had gained her angel wings. I am very grateful to the staff at the Candy Store for being vigilant and for sharing their CCTV footage. Eastleigh is a small community and this has angered many, many people.

“I would say she is the lowest of the low – obviously she has never lost a child otherwise she would never go down that route.”

The incident happened on August 6, and manager at the Candy Room, Donna Parsons, said: “I think it is absolutely disgusting.

“It is vile to use someone’s dead child to try and get money to go and benefit herself.

“I spoke to the lady on the phone and she had been quite aggressive towards my staff – she left as soon as she knew I was coming in.”

Now the image of the woman has been shared more than 1,000 times online and police are investigating the incident.

Sophie’s Appeal was started in 2003 by her parents, Lin and Mike, and some of their close friends following the little girl’s diagnosis with Wilms’ disease – a form of kidney cancer – which claimed her life in December 2004 when she was just six.

Sophie’s Appeal became the fundraising arm of The Sophie Barringer Trust in September 2005 when the trust was granted charity status; the charity has raised more than £300,000 since it began.

A spokesman for Hampshire Constabulary said: “We received a report of an incident in which a woman had entered the candy shop on Market Street in Eastleigh, this is reported to have happened at around 8pm on August 6.

“What was reported to us was that a woman walked into the shop and spoke to a member of staff and claimed that another member of staff had promised her some money, however the member of staff spoken to on the day said this was not the case.”

“It is currently under investigation and enquiries are ongoing.”

To find out more about Sophie’s Appeal visit www.sophiesappeal.org