A woman has been detained in Tenerife, accused of trying to murder her son after she threw him into the sea three times during a whale and dolphin excursion off the coast of Adeje, whilst shouting in English: "I do not want to live, I do not want my son to live."
The unnamed woman, who has a Mali passport, will be tried at Court in Santa Cruz next week, and the Prosecutor's Office is requesting 12 years of internment in a psychiatric centre considering that at that time she was suffering from a psychotic breakdown that affected her ability to act in a reasonable way.
According to witnesses and the crew of the pleasure boat, the woman went to the bow of the boat with her young son and threw him overboard into the water when they were out at sea. One of the passengers rescued the child, thinking that was an accident, and handed him back to his mother.
But shortly after she approached the stern of the boat and threw herself into the sea with him in her arms, this time trying to drown him by holding his head under the water.
Fortunately, thanks to the intervention of the captain and a passenger who jumped into the water, they managed to snatch the boy from his mother's hands and get him safely onto the boat.
Meanwhile, the woman got back onto the boat shouting in English: "I do not want to live, I do not want my son to live," and grabbed her son from the passengers looking after him and jumped into the water with him again.
Following this, more passengers got involved and got the boy from the water, and others restrained the mother while the boat headed back to the port of Puerto Colon, where the police were waiting to question and detain the woman, whilst the young boy was taken into custody by social services.
The Public Prosecutor considers it proven that at that time the woman suffered a mental disorder that consisted of a “psychotic episode with delusional ideas, hallucinations, altered reality judgment, and obsessive thoughts that completely affected her ability to reason and act.”
For these reasons, they opted to commit the defendant to a psychiatric centre instead of prison.
