Seven years’ jail for woman who killed 2-year-old daughter by throwing her on the floor twice

SINGAPORE — The 28-year-old housewife had lost two of her six children to illness and was suffering from a major depressive disorder. Then one afternoon, she snapped.

While tending to her two-year-old daughter, she grew increasingly angry over the toddler defecating on a towel and constantly crying.

This culminated in her grabbing the child by the armpits, lifting her to shoulder height and throwing her onto the floor — not once but twice, landing head-first on one occasion.

The girl fell unconscious and did not respond when her mother kicked her in the side. She died about a week later in KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

On Monday (Nov 4) in the High Court, the mother — now aged 30 — pleaded guilty to one charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. She was sentenced to seven years’ jail.

The bespectacled woman cried softly in the dock as an interpreter read the facts out to her. Neither she nor the victim can be named due to a court gag order to protect the identities of their other family members.

The woman was allowed to speak to some of them, including her husband and son, after the hearing.

In sentencing her, Judicial Commissioner Vincent Hoong called the case a “deeply unfortunate” one and said he recognised that she was in a difficult situation.

“However, this involved an unprovoked attack on a vulnerable child,” he added, noting that she had acted out of frustration and knew what she was doing, despite her mental illness.

‘VERY HARD’ IMPACT ON FLOOR

The court heard that she had been married to her husband, a delivery driver, since 2010. The victim was their fifth child.

He typically took their older son, who is now aged 10, to school before going to work. She stayed home with the toddler.

On the morning of April 9 last year, the mother woke her daughter up in their Choa Chu Kang two-room flat, fed her milk and told her to play with her toys in the living room. She then went back to sleep.

A few hours later, she got up and found the girl looking ill and lying on the mattress in the living room. She then gave her a bath in the kitchen toilet and took her to the bedroom.

When she set her on a towel, the girl defecated, so she took her back to the toilet. Some of the faeces dropped onto the floor on the way and she scolded her daughter for passing motion, causing her to cry.

The girl remained standing in the kitchen sobbing when her mother asked her to follow her into the bedroom.

She pulled the girl into the bedroom by her hand, dressed her and shouted at her to be quiet. When the girl kept crying, she threw her forcefully onto the floor from shoulder level, with the toddler landing head-first.

The toddler cried even louder. The mother noticed that she appeared to be in pain when she asked her to put her toys away. The child continued crying.

She then lifted the girl again and threw her “using all her might”, said Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Zhou Yihong. The girl landed on her back and again hit her head, and the impact was “very hard”.

“Still furious at this point, the accused kicked her on her left side forcefully. There was no response,” the prosecutor added.

LIED TO HUSBAND AND POLICE

Growing alarmed that the toddler was no longer moving, she began giving her cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

When her husband called, she lied that their daughter was having fits and did not tell him what she had done. After he returned home and told her to take the girl to KKH, she gathered the girl’s medical documents and took a Grab car to the hospital.

Along the way, she noticed that the girl was bleeding from the mouth.

At the hospital, she took a queue number and was attended to immediately when a nurse noticed the girl’s condition.

The mother repeated her lie during two interviews with police officers that evening and the next day. She said that she had woken up from a nap to find the toddler having seizures, and carried the struggling girl to her shoulders before she “fell out” of her hold and landed on the floor.

She also said that she, the mother, had been sick for the past few days and had been unable to hold onto the child as she felt weak.

However, the mother confessed to her actions two days later.

Five days after the incident, the girl was declared brain-dead and, at the father’s request, was placed on life support. She was pronounced dead three days later.

An autopsy showed that the cause of death was head injury, involving multiple skull fractures that were consistent with blunt force trauma.

A psychiatrist diagnosed the mother with major depressive disorder, which had substantially impacted her mental responsibility. Nevertheless, she was not of unsound mind at the time and was aware of the nature of her actions.

The psychiatrist also said that the mental illness had set in before the death of her youngest child in February last year — just two months before the incident.

‘IN PERFECT CONTROL OF HERSELF’: DPP

In asking for at least seven years’ jail, the prosecution called her actions a “vicious, sustained and unprovoked attack” on a vulnerable victim.

“The accused got angry at some of (the girl’s) behaviour… but all she had done was what all two-year-olds do — cry and misbehave at times,” DPP Zhou argued.

The woman had also slit her wrists in 2007 and was treated in hospital, before going to the Institute of Mental Health at the end of 2009 for attempted suicide. But she chose not to turn up for follow-up appointments, the prosecutor said.

While she had a mental condition, she was “in perfect control of herself” at the time and “retained the ability to reason”.

In mitigation, her lawyer Anand Balachandran said that she made no excuse for what she did, but was affected by the deaths of two of her children.

The first child was four months old and had died of a viral infection in 2011, after which she had “recurring insomnia”. The second child died two days after being discharged from hospital, as he had been prematurely born and was frail, Mr Balachandran added.

He also said that her mental illness had not been diagnosed at the time and she takes her medication daily now.

“When she realised that (her daughter) had passed, she held her daughter tightly in her arms and apologised repeatedly, crying and saying that she did not intend for this to happen,” Mr Balachandran told the court.