A mother who hoped to save the world from COVID-19 through fasting and prayers has reportedly been found not guilty in the death of her three-year-old son, who died of hunger and thirst after being drawn into his madness.
Olabisi Abubakar, 42, was found not guilty in the death of her three-year-old son, Taiwo, after seeing his mental health deteriorate greatly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, reported The Guardian Friday.
Dead for some time, the toddler had been found emaciated by the police, alongside his malnourished and dehydrated mother, after a friend of the latter sounded the alarm.
The pathologists’ report determined that the young boy suffered from malnutrition and dehydration, he who weighed only 9.8 kg – about 22 pounds – when he was found.
According to the facts reported by the court, the woman in the midst of paranoid schizophrenia would have led her boy on a fast that was intended to save the world from COVID-19.
But exceptionally, the Crown prosecutor, Mark Heywood, himself asked the jury to find the defendant not guilty, presenting the case as that of a “profound tragedy”, affecting a “really good mother” from whom still emanated an appetizing smell of food, according to The Guardian.
‘Unbalanced’ by the pandemic and already greatly worried about her immigration status, the Nigerian asylum seeker from Cardiff, Wales, is said to have undergone a ‘drastic change’, even starting to hear voices and hallucinate , continued defense attorney Caroline Rees.
The jury will have to continue its deliberation on charges of negligence.