Mum Stabs Autistic Teen Son And His Pet Pooch To Death

Story By: Ernest Bio BogoreSub-EditorJoseph Golder, Agency: Central European News

A 42-year-old mum with psychiatric problems has gone on trial in France for the murder of her autistic son and his pet dog after a court decided she was responsible for deciding to stop taking her medication.

An expert witness had initially testified that the woman’s psychiatric problems meant she was not responsible for the murder of her 14-year-old son, who was killed on 21st September 2016 in Landres in the north-eastern French department of Meurthe-et-Moselle.

However, a second expert witness said that she was responsible for deciding to not take her medication, and as a result was prosecuted on this basis with the trial getting underway in the city of Nancy.

According to local media, the teenager was stabbed in his bed six times, mainly in the abdomen and torso. The body of his dog, which his mother had given him just over a year before, was found next to him after being stabbed over 10 times, according to reports.

The boy’s mother, identified as Severine Michelin, who has already told the court “I am guilty”, was also found lying next to the victim after having drunk a cleaning product in a failed suicide bid. She reportedly suffers from depression.

She was hospitalised and then taken to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.

Local media said that Michelin has confessed to the crime, explaining that she first tried to make him swallow medicine which he managed to vomit up, after which she stabbed him and the dog.

Michelin explained that she was feeling lonely after her eldest daughter moved in with her father several weeks before.

An initial psychiatric expert testified that the mother, who was depressed, had allegedly murdered him to “to protect him”.

A second opinion by two psychiatrists concluded that her judgement was simply impaired. Psychiatric doctors had pointed out that she was in a severe depressive state, but that she had deliberately failed to take her treatment, prescribed several months earlier, and that she had used the medication to try to kill her son.

She is being prosecuted for murder and faces life imprisonment. The verdict will be handed down on Thursday.

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