Africa-Press – Eswatini. In a shocking act of cruelty that will leave many parents devastated, a teenage couple is alleged to have strangled their six-month-old toddler to death after the father discovered that she was not his child.
The mother of the baby suffocated her own child, closing her mouth and nose until she was unconscious. As if that was not enough, when the two noticed that she was still breathing, they repeated the same thing until she was dead.
To top a painful death for the six-month-old baby, the couple then spent the night with the body in the same room.
This is the shocking story of the 17-year-olds, *Thabo and *Pinky, who are alleged to have cut the baby’s life short on Sunday night at Ngculwini area. It is believed that the teenage parents’ resolve to kill the baby’s life came about after the mother confessed that Thabo was not the father of her baby.
The two teenagers were doing Form II.
Sources close to the matter stated that Thabo discovered that he was not the toddler’s father after he saw that another man’s name was on the baby’s immunisation card, and in his further investigation on the matter, the teenage father discovered that Pinky had lied to him twice about some trips she made to Ezulwini and Mpholi areas.
Subsequently, Thabo is said to have confronted Pinky about the matter and she confessed that she had an affair with another man from Mpholi area. The teenage mother also allegedly confessed that the baby that Thabo’s family had been supporting was not his, but the Mpholi man’s child.
This is said to have infuriated Thabo who asked if Pinky was considerate of his family’s effort to maintain the baby. He also reportedly asked how Pinky would compensate for her unfaithfulness, and her first suggestion was that they should break up.
However, Thabo said this was not enough, so the young mother allegedly said she would kill the baby, a suggestion that was welcomed by Thabo. Before this was carried out, Thabo allegedly suggested that they came up with a cover story about what could have killed the baby.
“Pinky notified him that the baby had bad sores on her head, and she also suggested that they would say the baby had a fever such that she was not breastfeeding,” said a source.
It is after they had agreed on this that the mother of the baby started to suffocate the baby until she was unconscious. When they realised that the baby was breathing again, Pinky allegedly suffocated her until she died.
The couple lay the lifeless body of the baby on the floor, and Thabo dozed off in bed while Pinky stayed up all night supposedly ruminating about what had happened. In the wee hours of Monday, the couple called Thabo’s mother on her mobile phone to notify her about the ‘sudden death’ of their baby.
Following this, Thabo’s mother arrived at the home where the two were, took the baby’s body and headed to Pinky’s parental homestead with an intention to notify her mother.
However, this did not go well so the body was eventually taken to a morgue in Manzini and the matter was reported to the police. Shockingly, the body was later fetched from the mortuary and was taken to hospital where it was tested for COVID-19.
Deputy Police Information and Communications Officer Inspector Nosipho Mnguni said the sudden death of a six-month-old baby was reported to the police.
“We only have a matter of a six-month-old who was reported to have died so we treat this case as a sudden death while we continue with investigations,’’ Mnguni said. She added that no arrests had been made by the time of going to print. *Not their real names
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