Cops: He said he’d slit child’s throat
Man held as 1-year-old found safe
A Lynn man accused of snatching a 1-year-old girl from a local laundromat when her mother turned around to check on their wash told detectives he was planning to slit the little girl’s throat after he ran out the door, police said.
Precious A. Chigbue, 24, pleaded not guilty yesterday in Lynn District Court to kidnapping the baby, who was returned unharmed after another customer at the Showcase Coin-op alerted her mother, Lynn police said. Chigbue was ordered held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing.
A 32-year-old man told Lynn cops he was sitting near the laundromat’s door about 11 a.m. Tuesday when he saw Chigbue suddenly grab the girl from behind and walk outside “without saying a word,” a police report said.
The laundromat’s owner, a mother of two herself, called the situation “everybody’s worst nightmare.”
“I was at the counter, and he made his move after I went into the back room for a few seconds,” the owner said. “That’s the scary part — how fast it happened.”
The witness said he immediately alerted the child’s 28-year-old mother, who ran, panic-stricken, after the suspect, according to a police report. And just as wordlessly as the suspect took the girl, the report said he handed the baby back before walking away toward Western Avenue.
When officers arrived, the mother showed them a cellphone photo she had taken of the suspect, who was wearing a sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants, police said.
After they broadcast his description, an officer working a detail at a nearby Stop & Shop spotted Chigbue and detained him until the man who witnessed the abduction could identify him as the kidnapper, the police report said.
When an officer asked Chigbue what he was planning to do with the girl, he answered, “I was thinking about killing the kid,” the report said. When the officer asked how, Chigbue responded, “I was going to slit her throat,” police said.
One of Chigbue’s family members told officers Chigbue is from Nigeria and was sent to the U.S. on a six-month tourist visa with his two brothers in May, according to police. The relative said Chigbue was fine until he went to college in Nigeria, started using drugs and ended up in a psychiatric hospital, the report said.
Although the hospital released him after one year, the relative told officers Chigbue continued to show signs of mental illness after he came to the U.S. and accused one of his brothers of being a witch who flew around their apartment, doing evil things to him, police said.
Chigbue also became obsessed with Hillary Clinton and the presidential election, the relative told officers. When the two saw each other earlier this week, the relative said Chigbue grabbed him by the shoulders and repeatedly asked him if he had voted for Clinton. He asked detectives the same question after they interviewed him, police said.
Chigbue told officers he takes the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to calm him down and stop hallucinations, their report said.
Asked why he went to the laundromat, he answered, “I wanted to kill the baby” — something he had decided when he went for a walk, police said. He then demonstrated how he grabbed her around the waist and picked her up, and told them she said, “Mama! Mama!”
When asked why he wanted to slit her throat, police said Chigbue told officers, “Because I just had that thought.”
Chigbue is due back in court Nov. 2.