Help, my children!
Mother’s screams as her boy aged three and daughter of one are knifed to death in ‘murder-suicide’
A DISTRAUGHT mother ran into the street screaming ‘help, my children,’ after her infant daughter and her son were stabbed to death in an apparent murder-suicide.
Her husband, the children’s father, was yesterday in hospital fighting for his life.
The girl of one died from knife wounds at the family home and her three-year- old brother later died at hospital.
Horrified neighbours saw officers giving CPR to the boy on the pavement outside the property in Ilford, east London, on Sunday as his sister’s blood- stained body was carried out.
The family are believed to have lived in a ground floor flat behind a shop. Their mother, named locally as Nisa, had been in the bath as the bloodshed took place, a spokesman from the Ilford Tamil Community branch said.
‘We understand she left the bathroom and found her entire family dying, covered in blood,’ he added. Neighbours said the mother screamed for help after the discovery at about 5.30pm.
A mother-of-two who lives across the road said: ‘It sounded like she was being tortured. It went on for about ten minutes.’
Another neighbour Intisar Ahmed said: ‘We could see police giving first aid to the little boy, who was covered in blood, just on the street. Then they carried his sister’s tiny body out. It was awful.’
The children’s father, Nithin Kumar, 40, was in a critical condition in hospital last night with a police guard.
Mr Kumar, who was born in Sri Lanka, finished his shift at the nearby CVS megastore, where he had worked for eight years, an hour before the tragedy unfolded. Sources in the community said he had been arguing with his wife
‘Police were giving first aid’
about whether he should be working after her brother died from Covid-19.
‘He would tell her there was no other way of making money to survive, but she was so frightened she would lose the rest of her family,’ a member of the Tamil community said.
Mr Kumar’s boss Shanmugatha Thevadurai, 54, said he showed no signs of anything out of the ordinary and had been polite and friendly with customers. He left work at 4pm.
Mr Thevadurai said: ‘He left to go home and said he would open up early again for me the next day. He would never really speak about his family or his home life at work. He was a hard working guy and he was very shy. He was very polite, very friendly and my customers all knew him.’
One neighbour, who did not want to be named, told The Times that the children were ‘happy and smiley’. ‘They were just playful children,’ the neighbour said.
Redbridge Council leader Jas Athwal described the incident as an ‘unspeakable tragedy’.
Last night Scotland Yard said that, although no formal arrest had been made, officers were not looking for anyone else in connection with the attack.