A woman in Northern Ireland who stabbed and killed her baby son and attempted to murder her toddler daughter has been jailed for a minimum of 20 years.
The 31-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, wept in the dock of Belfast crown court on Friday when the sentence was passed.
She had admitted stabbing the eight-week-old boy and two-year-old girl in their Belfast home on 27 July 2021 but denied the charges.
During the trial prosecutors accused her of stabbing the children to “spite” her partner. A psychiatrist said the woman had told him: “He destroyed my life so I destroyed his.”
Judge Donna McColgan told the defendant, who was convicted of murder and attempted murder in March, that she must serve at least 20 years. She said the case was “exceptionally grave” and entailed an “exceptionally high” breach of trust.
McColgan said the woman was a dangerous offender who had been in an abusive relationship and may have had moderate depression at the time.
The defendant claimed her partner used drink and drugs and beat and sexually abused her, leaving her feeling like “a dog in a cage”. The stabbings were her only chance to escape him, she said.
During a police interview she said she delayed stabbing her baby after he looked at her and smiled. She said she kissed both children, telling them they “would always be in her heart”.
She stabbed the baby twice in his heart and the girl in her chest. She then made five phone calls, including to the children’s father, who was not at home, and told him their daughter was slowly bleeding. In a 999 call to police she said: “I killed my kid for him.”
The court heard that police encountered a harrowing scene: the defendant on a bed holding her screaming daughter by the head, with the lifeless baby beside them.
A constable tried to resuscitate the baby. “I wouldn’t worry about him, he’s dead. I stabbed him,” the woman told police, according to a constable’s evidence during the trial.
Both children were taken to the Royal Belfast hospital for sick children, where the girl was saved and the boy pronounced dead. The judge lauded emergency services. “But for the intervention of police who attended at the scene, the medical staff at the house and the hospital, we would currently be dealing with the deaths of two very young children.”
A clinical psychologist said that at a foster placement and a nursery the girl had been observed “re-enacting” the attack by stabbing a toy doll with play scissors. The court heard she had been left feeling “unsafe, confused, sad, stressed, terrified and anxious”, and that the ordeal would have a lifelong effect.
In a statement the children’s father said words could not describe the family’s grief. “We never got to see my son grow up, but will never forget him.”
Addressing reporters outside court, DI Gina Quinn said a tiny and innocent life had been taken in senseless and tragic circumstances.
