Moscow police on Monday arrested a nanny suspected of beheading a young girl in her care, with witnesses saying the black-clad woman was carrying a severed head and threatening to “blow everyone up.”
The agitated woman, who was reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar” — “God is great” in Arabic — was spotted pacing up and down outside a Moscow metro station in front of bewildered bystanders.
Russian investigators said a woman had been detained after killing a child aged three or four who reportedly had learning disabilities, then setting fire to the apartment and fleeing.
Photo: Reuters
“I hate democracy. I am a terrorist. I want you dead,” the woman in a headscarf shouted, as she waved the head, according to footage broadcast by local television.
“You have become so hardened; you have eliminated so many of us. Look I am a suicide bomber, I will die, doomsday will come in a second,” she said in accented Russian.
Witness Alyona Kuratova told independent Dozhd TV that the woman was holding the head by its hair.
Kuratova described scenes of chaos, with police cars and ambulances arriving at the scene and some people yelling: “Terror attack, terror attack.”
She said she could not make out what the woman shouted, but some media reported that she yelled “Allahu Akbar” and threatened to blow herself up.
Another witness said the woman shouted that she would “kill everyone, blow up everyone.”
Some said the woman had paced up and down for some 20 minutes before she was detained near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station.
LifeNews, a news service with close ties to law enforcement agencies, said that when police approached her for a document check, she pulled the head out of her bag and started yelling that she had killed a child.
Television footage showed several men approaching and overpowering the woman, who some media reports said suffered mental health problems.
“Monstrous and inexplicable,” Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov tweeted, urging parents to carefully check on the mental state of nannies when they are hired.
Investigators said a criminal probe had been opened and that the suspect would undergo a psychiatric examination to establish whether she “understands the meaning of her actions and behavior.”
Interfax news agency, citing a law enforcement source, identified the woman as 38-year-old Gyulchekhra Bobokulova, a native of Uzbekistan.
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