A 30-year-old mother has been arrested for killing her own five-year-old daughter by gouging out her eyes, cutting and eating tongue.
Josimare Gomes da Silva was arrested after police were called to her home in Alagoas, Brazil on January 24 following the horrific ordeal.
The victim’s grandfather reportedly saw blood running from the outside drain – and then broke into the bathroom where da Silva and her daughter, Brenda Carollyne Pereira da Silva were.
He found his granddaughter’s lifeless body beside her mother – who was praying in a daze – and called the police.
His granddaughter’s eyes had been gouged out and her tongue had been cut off, and investigators believe the injuries – which were inflicted with a pair of scissors while she was still alive – caused her death.
The grandfather told police his granddaughter’s neck was also purple as if it had been crushed.
It has also been reported that da Silva, who was sedated and then taken to the police station in Delmiro Gouveia, Alagoas, had chewed on her daughter’s amputated tongue.
The mum allegedly gave a statement to the police in the nearby municipality of Delmiro Gouveia the following morning in a number of languages, including Spanish.
During the incoherent statement, she is said to have denied gouging out her daughter’s eyes and putting her daughter’s amputated tongue in her own mouth.
The suspect is known to suffer from mental health issues including depression, and it is believed she carried out the attack during a psychotic episode.
She is currently being held at a police station and will be transferred to a women’s prison in the state capital Maceio as the case was being investigated.
Meanwhile, district attorney for Maravilha, Kleytione Pereira, has requested the woman be hospitalised for her crimes, rather than jailed.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office in a statement said;
Due to the circumstances in which they appeared in the fact, with strong indications that the victim’s mother has psychological and psychiatric problems, and that perhaps at the time of the crime she was even in an outbreak.
