Fugitive mom ‘at risk from abusive partner’

AS police hunt a young couple accused of murdering their two babies, the children’s grandmother says she fears for her daughter’s safety.

Avril van der Ross, 50, said she was extremely worried about her daughter, StaceyLee, 29, who fled along with her partner, Junaid Adam-Shaik, 33, in February when their murder trial was due to start.

The couple, from Florida, west of Johannesburg, face two charges of murder, two of assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm, one each of child abuse and one of defeating the ends of justice.

They are accused in the deaths of their first daughter, Alaia, who died when she was just five months old in October 2012, and Amanee, who died in March last year at the age of three months.

Van der Ross said the couple had had a stormy relationship, during which Adam-Shaik had abused Stacey-Lee.

Now that they were on the run, “he might hurt Stacey-Lee, if not kill her, or kill both of them”.

Van der Ross said that when Alaia died the couple told her the baby had choked on her food, but a postmortem examination revealed that Alaia had suffered several bone fractures and other injuries.

“Everybody was devastated by Alaia’s death,” the baby’s grandmother said. “I had to believe what they told me.”

Van der Ross said that when Amanee died, her daughter and Adam-Shaik again claimed the baby had choked to death.

But police brought a second murder charge last year after an autopsy.

Van der Ross said all she wanted was for Stacey-Lee to come home. She said she refused to believe that her daughter would have harmed her own children.

“There’s more to this story, I know it,” she said. — Jan Bornman