Manama: Police in the Saudi city of Tabuk are investigating an Ethiopian domestic helper on suspicion of killing a five-year-old boy.
The helper, 19, was arrested after the family that was employing her discovered Mohammad, their son, dead inside a large wooden box.
“We received a call from the operation room from King Khalid Hospital alerting us about the suspicious death of a five-year-old Saudi boy,” Khalid Al Gadhyan, the spokesperson for Tabuk Police, said. “A highly-qualified team was formed to look into the case. They discovered bruises on the boy’s thighs and blood on his private parts. The family said that they had lost their son shortly before iftar, when Muslims end their fast, and when they looked for him, they found him inside the large wooden box in one of the rooms,” he said, quoted by local news site Sabq on Wednesday.
The family said that they suspected the domestic helper even though she was acting normally, he added.
“The investigation team pressed the helper and she initially denied any wrongdoing,” Al Gadhyan said. “However, she later said that the boy had thrown stones at her and ran away. She chased him and when she caught him, she stripped him naked.”
He said she then abused the boy with a 20-centimetre long stick, causing him to bleed, before putting him inside the wooden box. “However, when he kept on crying she took a prayer mat and suffocated him,” she said.
The helper reportedly attempted to hide the crime by eliminating all evidence. She cleaned up the blood and threw the stick in the garbage bin, he said.
“She then resumed her daily routine,” he said.
The police have remanded her in custody and kept Mohammad’s body in hospital, pending the end of the investigation.
The child’s father said that Mohammad had been playing with his siblings when he went missing and that the family looked for him everywhere until his mother found him inside the box.
He added that the helper had been with them for a year and a half and that they had been treating her well.
“We gave her a salary of 1,200 riyals (Dh1,175) a month and we trusted her,” he said.
