The woman accused of trying to drown her son three times during a boat trip in the south of Tenerife last week has been acquitted of attempted murder and admitted to a psychiatric hospital after appearing at the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz yesterday (Monday).
The Prosecutor's Office has agreed to reduce the requested sentence from 12 to 10 years, and now it will be the judge who gives the final ruling, but during the judicial session, all parties agreed that the woman suffered a psychotic breakdown.
Proof of this is that days before the incident she sent several messages to her friends full of biblical quotes announcing the arrival of the advent, and claims that she was trying to end her son's life to save him from the apocalypse.
The woman's parental status has been withdrawn from her son, who was visiting her mother as he lives in France with his father after they split in April 2021.
The incident took place when the woman and her son were on a pleasure boat off the coast of Adeje last week and, as the captain recounted, he first asked him to take a photo of them both at the front of the boat, which he agreed to, although he warned her not to pick up her son to avoid any mishap.
After taking a couple of photos, she told him that she was going to stay at the bow, the captain left, and shortly after he heard something fall into the water and saw that two people had jumped into the sea to save the young boy from drowning.
Later, when the boat was about to serve food to the passengers, the mother asked permission to go to the stern and that was when she jumped into the sea holding the child and tried to hold him underwater screaming that she didn’t want to live and she didn’t want her son to live.
Everything happened in just a few seconds and once again thanks to the intervention of the passengers the homicide was prevented, although this time they had to resort to force, slapping her face and grabbing her by the neck to save the boy's life.
After asking her what she was doing, two passengers took care of him and took the mother to the cabin, where she was treated by a German psychologist who happened to be on the boat.
The captain called the Police to meet them at the port to arrest the mother as soon as they docked, but once again she managed to grab her son from the hands of the people looking after him to try and throw him back into the water, although this time she didn’t succeed.
The witness said that he was particularly struck by the fact that when they arrived at the port, she showed a very cold attitude in the face of the hysteria that she had displayed when the incidents occurred.
During the trial, the woman intervened briefly to apologize to her son, apologize for what happened, and expressed her desire to be transferred to a centre in France.
The defendant accepted her guilt and all the parties consider it proven that, at that time, she was suffering from a mental disorder that consisted of a psychotic episode with delusional ideas, hallucinations, altered judgment of reality, and obsessive thoughts that completely affected her ability to reason and act.
