When I Was Young

Just like the others, I am speechless about this news story…

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Woman who ate newborn's brain, innards charged

SAN ANTONIO - The scene was so gruesome investigators could barely speak: A three-week-old boy lay dismembered in the bedroom of a single-storey house, three of his tiny toes chewed off, his face torn away, his head severed and his brains ripped out.

"At this particular scene you could have heard a pin drop," San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said on Monday. "No one was speaking. It was about as sombre as it could have been."

Officers called to the home early on Sunday found the boy's mother Otty Sanchez sitting on the couch with a self-inflicted wound to her chest and her throat partially slashed, screaming "I killed my baby! I killed my baby!" police said.

She told the officers that the devil made her do it.

Sanchez, 33, apparently ate the child's brain and some other body parts before stabbing herself, Mr McManus said. "It's too heinous for me to describe it any further," he added.

Sanchez is charged with capital murder in the death of her son, Scott Wesley Buccholtz-Sanchez (picture). She was treated on Monday at a hospital, and is being held on US$1 million ($1.4 million) bail.

The slaying occurred a week after the child's father moved out, Mr McManus said. Sanchez's sister and her sister's two children, aged 5 and 7, were in the house, but were not harmed.

The police said Sanchez did not have an attorney, and they declined to identify family members.

No one answered the door on Monday at Sanchez's home, where the blinds were shut.

Neighbour Luis Yanez said everyone on the street was appalled by the news. "Why would you do that to your baby? It brings chills to you. They can't defend themselves," he said.

Sanchez's aunt, Gloria Sanchez, said her niece had been "in and out" of a psychiatric ward but did not say where she was treated or why. She said a hospital called several months ago to check up on her.

"Otty didn't mean to do that. She was not in her right mind," said Ms Gloria.

Investigators are looking into Sanchez's mental health history to see if there was anything "significant", and whether postnatal difficulties could have contributed to the attack, McManus said.

Post-natal depression and psychosis have been cited as contributing factors in several other cases in Texas in recent years in which mothers killed their children.

Andrea Yates drowned her five children in her Houston-area home in 2001, saying she believed Satan was inside her and trying to save them from hell. Her attorneys said she had been suffering from severe post-natal psychosis, and the jury found Yates not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006. AP

From TODAY, World – Wednesday, 29-Jul-2009