An Argentinian mother allegedly wrapped her five-year-old baby in concrete inside a wooden box and made it her bedside table.
This story tells you much about human relationships but certainly not what do I love you mean. But a murder most foul, committed by a mother against her own baby, does not define relationships.
Vanesa Alejandra Mansilla, 27, a resident of San Andres, Buenos Aires, claimed that she found her five-year-old Milagros already dead.
On the contrary, according to police reports, she placed her daughter’s body in a nylon bag inside a wooden box before filling it with concrete.
However, upon cross-examination by the police, she told them that she got frightened and did not know what to do with her daughter’s body after her death.
“She used the box with the body as a bedside table in her bedroom. She was a young girl who was born prematurely, had multiple pre-existing conditions, and had a tracheotomy and a nasogastric tube,” a police spokesperson said.
From what her friends and relatives have said, Vanesa favored her other two children, aged seven and three, while Milagros was often left alone in an unsanitary environment.
Vanesa’s two other children have been placed in the temporary care of their maternal grandmother.
The authorities are waiting for autopsy results and the analysis of the bed mattress where blood marks have been found.
Currently, Vanesa is held in police custody as the investigation continues.
Other baby murders
In a related event in Pennsylvania, USA, the dead bodies of two little boys were found in a bathtub — and had clothes dumped over them to cover them up.
In October this year, an eight-month-old baby girl was found dead with her parents and uncle in a central California orchard two days after they were kidnapped at gunpoint. No motive yet for the kidnapping and murder has been established.
The monstrous and senseless killing of a child is something that only few can understand, yet there are about 13,120 children murdered in the United States every year.
Investing in children’s safety
Children are confronted with the highest risk of being slaughtered by their parents and people they know. Thus, there is a need for increased investment in the gathering and analysis of routine data on child homicide, including its perpetrators.
This is imperative if we are to understand and eventually reduce child homicide mortality all over the world.
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