Darmstadt (dpa / lhe) - Because her 13-month-old child died of thirst and starvation, a 26-year-old woman from Rüsselsheim is facing murder before the Darmstadt district court. At the start of the trial on Thursday, the defendant made a confession in a statement read by her defense attorney. The public prosecutor assumes that the Portuguese woman was in a state of significantly reduced criminal responsibility from mid-October 2021 and did not take care of her son for eight days. The defendant informed her defense attorney that she could not explain her behavior.
She dressed her son and laid him in bed fed. "I closed the door of the children's room and then it was like I was in another world," the lawyer read. When the accused called the emergency services herself on October 24, 2021, the child had corpse stains and had been dead for a long time, an emergency doctor testified. There was moldy food and baby food in the untidy apartment.
The woman's relatives were shocked in court and said that the accused was a caring mother who followed the midwife's advice. A cousin of the accused said that there had been cases of schizophrenia in the family for four generations. She also said that the accused and her three siblings were taken into custody by the youth welfare office 20 years ago for parental and sexual violence.
The trial will continue on June 3rd, with four days of hearings scheduled until June 22nd.
