2023-09-28 18:05:00
Earlier in the day, the jurors found her guilty of beating her son in the family home in Wihéries (Dour). On July 16, 2019, she called her husband, who was at work, to inform him that their nine-month-old son Enzo had felt unwell. She calls her mother and then the emergency services, six minutes later.
The paramedics decide to take the child to the Epicura hospital in Hornu for examinations. The mother refuses to let him spend the night in the hospital. Since the death of her daughter, who died during childbirth in October 2017, the mother has been anxious and depressed. The hospital staff threatens to contact the prosecutor, she gives in on the condition of being able to stay with her son and her husband.
The day of the crime
On July 18, 2019, the child was still hospitalized. His dad goes to get some clothes. Possessive and anxious, she calls her husband several times, which annoys him. At the last call, it’s her mother who answers and forbids her from calling her husband, except for something important.
Alone with her son in the hospital room, the one who did research on the Internet with the keywords suffocated baby, presses hard on her child’s chest, then timidly calls the nurses. The child is brain dead and is taken to Jolimont hospital urgently. He was declared dead on July 22. The death was of unnatural cause, notes a doctor. An investigation is opened for assault and battery resulting in death without intention to cause it.
The expert reports, which concluded that death was due to mechanical asphyxiation, changed the charge to murder.
Premeditated murder
On Thursday, jurors found that the crime was premeditated. On July 15, the mother did searches on the Internet with the keywords suffocated baby or child suffocation.
On July 18, she placed a blanket on little Enzo, while the temperature was scorching in the summer of 2019. She made sure to ask for his meal tray in order to be alone in his room, while the nurses distributed the trays in other patients.
She also disconnected the electrodes placed on the child while he was sleeping, which explains why the alarm system did not activate.
Just before taking action, she walked through the corridors of the hospital with her son in her arms, in order to show that he was well and to be able to give the excuse of sudden death.
Finally, the accused admitted to having put pressure on her son’s chest, which caused death.
The punishment
For the sentence, the jurors took into account mitigating circumstances: his young age, his limited intellectual abilities, complicated family circumstances, Münchhausen syndrome, his depression following the death of his daughter.
The accused declared that she had not wanted to kill her son, but the president reminded her that the legal truth was quite different.
The public prosecutor did not request his immediate arrest.
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