MOTHER WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA DROWNS FOUR-YEAR-OLD SON IN BATH
A mentally ill mother drowned her four-year-old son in the bath and told police he had said: "Mummy don't kill me" before she submerged him under the water.Paramedics confirmed Kingswealth Bayode died at the scene.
Oluwakemi Badare, aged 37, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, denied murder but was deemed unfit to plead due to her mental state.
After a trial at the Old Bailey, the jury found her responsible for his murder.
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC explained: "On December 27, 2020, the London Ambulance Service was called by this defendant to her address in Plumstead.
She told the emergency operator she had killed her son, explaining she drowned him and had left him in the bath and forgotten about him.
When paramedics arrived, they found Kingswealth's body at the top of the stairs outside the bathroom with his body still wet.
The bathroom floor was wet too, and there were scratches, bruises, and skin defects on his head, neck, and upper body consistent with pressure from fingernails and focal pressure to the head, indicating he was held under water intentionally.
Badare called emergency services at 7:45 am, admitting she had killed her son, and saying she wanted to bathe him, filling the tub with cold water and forgetting him.
When paramedics arrived, she was upset and banging her arms, claiming the bath had been at midnight.
The police found her seated calmly by the Christmas tree but later observed her to be restless.
She was arrested at 8:27 am, responding, "Yes, I forgot him in the bath," before collapsing.
She initially was fit to interview but later became erratic in custody, claiming, "My son was telling me, Mummy don't kill me." The evidence indicated the drowning was deliberate, not accidental.
Kingswealth had previously been removed from her care in 2017 after she confessed to holding him underwater during a prior incident, at a time she was suffering from delusions and believed she was being surveilled.
She did not regain care of him until March 2018.
Following her arrest in 2020, she told a custody nurse she had previously tried to kill her son.
The prosecution argued that her two drowning attempts, in 2017 and again in 2020, when she was unwell, suggest a pattern.
Her case was that she did not accept her son was dead and was deemed unfit to plead due to her mental illness.
Detective Inspector Jason Crinnion of the Met’s Specialist Crime said: "This case is so sad, young Kingswealth Bayode lost his life at the hands of his mother, who is clearly very ill...
Sentencing will take place on July 20 when a hospital order will be imposed."
