Liberia: Man, 22, Sent to Court for Killing Year-old Daughter

 Defendant Robert Blateh (second from left) being escorted  to the Monrovia Central Prison

 

A 22-year-old man who allegedly killed his one-year-old daughter after smashing her head, has been forwarded to court for prosecution.

Robert Klonkon Blateh was under the influence of a synthetic drug known as “Kush”, when he committed the alleged act, police investigation revealed. The tragic incident happened in the Tusa Field community in the township of Gardnerville.

The police investigation claimed that Blateh, on the morning of May 8," brutally murdered his one-year-old daughter, after failing to get hold of his prime target — Prince Gibson — a man he had initially threatened to kill.

"Blateh was arrested and acquainted with his constitutional rights, investigated, and subsequently charged by the Liberia National police with the crime of murder. His arrest was based on a complaint filed by the landlord of the accused."

Blateh, the police claimed admitted to the police that consuming the drug and then started to behave unusually. The accused action, according to the police is a violation of the country's penal code of Liberia, saying Blateh "purposely and intentionally caused the death of the baby under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human/" life.

“The defendant told the police investigator that he was experiencing periods of hallucinations in which he inferred that he heard voices instructing him to carry out self-destruction actions such as tearing off his clothes in public, as well as other abnormal behavior even to the extent of threatening to kill his fiancée and brutally killing his own daughter,” the police disclosed.

“On the night of the incident, Blateh returned home very late, and upon entering he threatened his wife not to leave the room or call anyone. The defendant forcibly stripped his fiancé and their child naked and himself. He began damaging things in the room which prompted the landlord, Amos Nyuanque, to wake up from his room to assess what was happening.

“But the defendant only insulted the landlord. Knowing that the defendant was quite recently in the habit of constantly beating on his fiancée, the landlord decided to inform the defendant’s mother, Hawa Sando, who lives a few houses about the unfolding,” police said.

The police explained that that Blateh mother and some neighbors, managed to open the door, and allow the victim’s mother to escape.

“They opened the door, allowing the victim’s mother to escape but the child, which he had grabbed from the mother upon her escape, was brutally murdered by him in the presence of his mother and other neighbors who witnessed his inhumane actions brutally meted out against his innocent one-year-old child, little Rachel Blateh, by bashing her head with electric fan stand. It was also established that before that upon the arrival of the police, the child was already dead."

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