Russian social services officials are facing criminal charges after a mum allegedly axed three of her four children to death – with horrified neighbours hearing piercing screams coming from the family home.
Valentina Mytko, 29, is accused of hacking her daughter, four, and sons, eight and seven months, whilst her husband was at work, according to the country’s Investigative Committee. The mum is said to have carried out the murders “with particular cruelty” in Kansk, Krasnoyarsk region – with neighbours hearing screams as the eight year old was killed, according to the evidence in the case. “He screamed really loudly,” said one.
Harrowing video footage showed officials scouring the crime scene, entering a dark, cluttered room and lifting a large axe before scanning it for any traces of blood. The mum was later scene being led away in handcuffs by police and seated in a room for questioning.
Russian social services officials are now facing criminal prosecution as officials knew the church-going mother had been registered with “paranoid schizophrenia”, and that the children were at risk, yet did not act, according to the committee. They are facing charges of “negligence” over the deaths, which were witnessed by the woman’s other child, a boy aged seven, when he returned from school, according to reports.
The mother took the boy to his grandparents and “sat down and cried”. Committee official Yulia Arbuzova said: “He did not see what happened there. He was in another room. Then the woman took the boy and went to her parents, and she told them what happened. Her father went into the house and found the children there, after which [he] called the police.”
During an interrogation, the mum could not explain what had happened but allegedly told investigators that she “did not have the strength to deal with [her surviving son].” The killings happened after the woman’s husband, a driver, had gone out to work, it is alleged. The children were found to have “axe wounds to their heads and various parts of their bodies”, reported the official Kremlin newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
The suspected axe allegedly used as the murder weapon was found at the site of the killings.
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