ALI MPHAKI
A nine-year-old girl is fighting for her life after her mother allegedly stabbed her repeatedly after taking her from her bed.
And as the 36-year-old mother stabbed the girl, she pushed the child’s grandmother to the ground while urging her repeatedly to pray.
The girl is in a critical condition at Lesedi Clinic in Soweto following the attack, which happened at about midnight on Sunday.
Just what went through the mind of her mother when she carried out the alleged attack on her only child has baffled her family.
The woman, a clerk at the Protea police station, has been arrested and will appear in court on charges of attempted murder.
She cannot be named in order to protect the child’s identity.
The woman made a brief appearance next door to her work at the Protea Magistrate’s Court on Monday afternoon, where her attempts to obtain bail and be allowed to visit her child in hospital were denied. She will appear in court again on Monday and is being kept at the women’s section of Diepkloof Prison.
The child’s traumatised grandmother yesterday told The Star that her daughter had been having marital problems and had left her house in Protea Glen to go back home to White City Jabavu.
It was around midnight on Sunday when “out of the blue” her daughter took the girl out of the bed and, without any provocation, allegedly started stabbing her. The three had been in one bed.
She explained that the child started screaming, saying her mom was strangling her. And when her grandmother tried to intervene, her daughter had pushed her to the ground while she continued to stab the girl. The child was stabbed eight times.
“As she continued to stab her, she kept on calling on me to pray. ‘Pray mom, pray mom,’ she cried out as she continued to stab her,” the grandma said.
It was only after she had summoned her son, who was sleeping in an outside room, that they were able to disarm her.
She said she was still trying to fathom what had gone through her daughter’s mind to commit such a deed. She described her as a God-fearing and church-loving person. “We just do not know what came over her.”
Police spokeswoman Captain Katlego Mogale said it was alleged that on Sunday night while the mother was asleep, she was overcome by some power which compelled her to check on her daughter.
“She awoke. Instead of seeing her daughter, the suspect alleges she saw something. She rushed to the kitchen and went back to the bedroom, where she started to stab the child. When she came to her senses, she realised she had stabbed her daughter,” said Mogale.