Frustrated woman tries committing suicide after killing all her children


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A woman killed her four children, including a set of twins, by strangling them inside her rented two-room apartment in Kamwokya, a Kampala suburb, before trying to kill herself.

Margaret Kasande, alias Nalongo, used a nylon curtain to strangulate her daughters, aged between two and five, one by one, starting with the eldest.

She then placed the four bodies on the bed in the front room and covered them neatly with a bed-sheet.

In an attempt to commit suicide, she put a rope around her neck and took poison but was rescued by her husband, Gerald Mukwandi, when he returned from work in the evening.

The state owned daily, New Vision, quoted the husband, a butcher at Kalerwe Abattoir, as saying that upon arrival, he found the door of the house locked and used the spare key to get in.

“When I opened the door, I heard my wife groaning. She was vomiting and had a rope tied round her neck. I saw the children lying in bed. I moved over and touched them. They were dead,” the paper quoted Mukwandi as saying.

He alerted the neighbours who came to his aid and rushed his wife to Mulago Hospital, where she was admitted before she was later transferred to Butabika Mental Hospital, while the corpses were taken to Mulago mortuary by the police.

Two of the children, three-year-old Martina Ainembabazi and five-year-old Marion Muhooza, were pupils at Arena Nursery School in Kamwokya and the twins, who were fondly called Nakato and Babirye by the relatives, were two years old.

Mukwandi, in his statement to the police, said a day before the tragedy, the couple had a disagreement.

“She wanted to start working but we had nobody to take care of our children. I wanted us to get a maid before she would start working,” he said, overwhelmed by emotion.

But another neighbour said Kasande decided to kill her children and commit suicide after she learnt that her husband intended to abandon her.

An elderly neighbour to the family, who identified herself as Jaja Claire, said the children did not go to school all day.

The police said Kasande was being closely monitored in hospital, adding that when she recovered, she would be charged with murder. Panapress .

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