I want to go home, maid who tried to kill 3 Emirati kids, tells court

The Ethiopian maid who poured boiling water on her Emirati employer’s children and attacked them with a chopper at a house in Al Warqa told the Dubai Criminal Court yesterday that she just wanted to go back home.

YS, 25, started weeping when she stood before the jury presided by Maher Salama Al Mahdi. He tried to calm her and asked her if she did pour boiling water on her employer’s three children and attacked them with a knife.

The maid was not conversant in Arabic was provided an English translator. However, she was unable to speak English too, but was crying and murmuring phrases that none could understand.

The judge tried all efforts to make her understand the allegations after she said that she knows but a little bit of Arabic.

The only phrase that she could make clear after being asked again about the allegations was that: “I just want to go home.”

The judge answered her that the court has to hear her case first. After that she resumed weeping.

The jury decided that it was difficult to understand the accused, and asked for a translator for Amharic, the Ethiopian language of the accused.

The court also ordered assigning a lawyer to defend the accused who is incapable of appointing one.

The Dubai Prosecution had asked the court to implement stiffest penalty against YS and accused her of premeditated attempt to kill her employer’s three children, two girls AM and RM aged 15 and 14 years respectively, and a son KM aged 10 years.

She waited till when the children were left in her custody as their mother had left the country for Jordan for medical treatment an hour before she attempted to kill them.

At around 7am the accused came carrying a boiler and a chopper and first poured boiled water on the two girls who were sleeping on their bed.

After pouring the water on the elder girl she stabbed her several times in head and neck then turned to the younger one and did the same before turning to the boy who was sleeping on the floor in the same room and attacked him similarly.

“We rushed to the hall to call the police, but we were stuck as the wires of the telephone were cut off. As she ran after using with the chopper in her hand attacking us, we rushed to the bathroom and locked the door with its key and called the police using a mobile phone,” The elder girl AM told investigators recalling the moment of terror form her bed in Rashid Hospital.

The children stayed in the bathroom screaming and shouting for help until policemen came. They were scared to open the door although they were been told that this is police, Corporal Ahmad Al Bloushi told investigators.

He also said finally the children opened the door and were in a very bad condition and bleeding from different areas of their bodies and sustaining burns in their faces and necks.

The corporal was rushed to the flat at Al Warqa 2 by Dubai Police operation room.

“My colleague and I reached to the location within five minutes. We knocked at the door and rang the bell but did not hear any response. After taking the permission from our senior we broke into the door. The hall was in a big mess and blood was all over the place. We heard the screams of the children from the bathroom so we tried to calm them down and convinced them to open the door. The children were bleeding everywhere of their bodies with burns in their faces and necks. They were rushed to Rashid Hospital,” the corporal told investigators.

Policemen found the maid sitting on the kitchen’s balcony holding a knife stained with blood.

“We had hard time to convince her hand over herself and drop the knife,” he said.

The maid claimed that she did that as her employer did not allow her to travel back home despite requests she made to her.

What to Do?

The mother of the victims learn't about the attack only after she returned home after two days.

Refuting the maid’s claims, she told investigators that the accused had been working for her since about two years and she had been treating her well and transferring her salary to her home country every three months.

She claimed that she did not know what to do about a complaint logged against her by the maid with the DNRD asking for cancellation of her visa and leaving for good.

“I had lost her passport which I had been keeping since she worked for me... I did not know what to do in this situation and which department I should contact, so I decided to increase her monthly salary from Dh500 to Dh700,” the employer told Corporal Al Bloushi.

Later the maid asked again to let her travel back home, so her employer decided to cancel her visa after the arrival of another maid she had applied for.

“I had applied for a Filipina and was waiting for her arrival... I had to travel to Jordan for treatment for two days and so I asked the children to stay with their grandmother... but as they said that they cannot move all their stuff and since I was to be absent for just two days, I let them stay with the maid in the our house,” the mother said.

Forensic reported that the children sustained wounds in their heads, faces and necks in addition to burns of second level (degree) mostly in their faces, necks and backs.

The maid is also prosecuted for suicide attempt as she tried to kill herself with two knives by wounding herself in the neck before her arrest.

YS is also accused of theft as police confiscated with her Dh540, and of destroying property.

The Court will reconvene on June 8.

In an earlier press statement, Dubai’s Attorney General Issam Isa Al Humaidan the penalty of the premeditated murder charge could be a sentence of life in jail.

“We ask the court to implement the stiffest penalty against the accused because of the brutality of her crime. The accused was determined to kill the children despite of their cries. She continued to attack them with the chopper though they were bleeding,” he said.

Al Humaidan pointed out that attempting to kill the children as revenge against their mother who had refused to send the housemaid home, cannot be justified at all. Her motive should not prevent imposition of the stiffest penalty.

However, society should take this crime as a lesson and should learn from it to help avoid such incidents, he added.

Al Humaidan said Dubai Prosecution has finished investigating the case. The housemaid had made a detailed confession of what she did and her motives.

He noted that the Prosecution had faced a major difficulty in hearing the testimonies of the elder girl and her sister and brother because of their burns and wounds and their psychological condition after the attack by the housemaid.

The three children spoke about their moments of terror when they woke up as the maid was attacking them with a chopper and poured boiled water on them until police arrived to rescue them.

Forensic reported that the victims survived burns and wounds that have not yet fully healed.

(Home page image courtesy Shutterstock)

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.