Mom in Custody, Baby and Toddler Dead in Bronx Tragedy

The children were found after officers took the mother into custody
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Nov 28, 2022 3:19 AM CST
Mom in Custody, Baby and Toddler Dead in Bronx Tragedy
Stock photo.   (Getty Images / Ajax9)

Two small children died of stab wounds after their mother was taken into custody for observation Saturday night in New York City, police said. A 3-year-old boy and an 11-month-old boy were found in a Bronx apartment with multiple stab wounds to the neck and torso and did not survive after being transported to a hospital, police said. The 24-year-old mother of the children had been taken into custody and transported to a hospital less than an hour earlier after acting erratically at an address on Echo Place in Mount Hope, the AP reports. Multiple outlets report the apartment is housed in one of the city's family shelters. Officers responded to a report of a “female acting erratic, but non-violent, with no weapons” around 7:20pm, De Ceglie said.

Police were told a woman was trying to burn items in the kitchen and found her in the third-floor apartment “acting irrational," De Ceglie said. She was taken into custody without incident until the arrival of an ambulance, which transported her to St. Barnabas Hospital for evaluation at about 7:50pm. Before leaving for the hospital, officers were told by a neighbor that the children were with their father, De Ceglie said. But the New York Post reports their bodies were actually buried under clothes in a bathtub, where the father found them. A 911 call at 7:55pm for the same location reported two children were not breathing; officers returned to the apartment and found the boys with multiple wounds.

De Ceglie said officers and a family member tried to resuscitate the children while awaiting an ambulance, which took them to New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, where they died. ABC 7 reports that their mother is considered a person of interest in their deaths, and sources tell the Post that she had become obsessed with demonic possession and may have killed her children because she believed they were possessed. (More New York stories.)

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