Kolahun, Lofa – Police in Lofa County have disclosed that 24-year-old Boweh Koifee, a mother of three, has killed her baby in that part of the country.
PUNCH has reliably learned that Boweh committed the act in Nyandimoilahun Town during the morning hours of Thursday, 9 August, hours after giving birth to a male infant.
The 24-year-old, following giving birth without medical assistance or midwifery supervision, later used a silver blade kitchen knife with a black handle and plucked out the left eye of her few-hours-old child, according to the police investigation.
Boweh admitted to the commission of the crime, confessing to police investigators that she murdered the child because she was abandoned by her husband, who she claims abandoned her in the name of finding a contract for their survival.
In an attempt to save the bleeding child, community residents who discovered the newborn baby lying in a pool of his own blood in a bucket after he was stabbed by his mother, immediately rushed him at the Nyandimoilahun Health Center for medical care, but the child died later while being attended to by health workers.
Several persons have condemned Boweh for murdering the infant, with many others demanding that the 24-year-old must be made to pay for what they described as her evil act against an innocent child.
Some citizens of Nyandimoilahun Town, where the murder of the baby took place, told PUNCH that they are of the belief that Boweh has another reason for murdering the child, other than what she has said, adding that she will have to explain the actual reason for committing such heinous crime.
“It is not because of any abandonment as she’s claiming,” said a 56-year-old woman only identified as Ma Wendor, who spoke with PUNCH in Lofa.
The husband of the murder suspect provided money, some clothes and other materials for the upkeep of both the mother and her unborn child prior to his departure for the Republic of Guinea, where he is said to have gone to seek a job for the upkeep of his family, according to Ma Wendor.
“So I see no reason for her to have attributed her evil act to abandonment, for me, let the law take its course so it can serve as a serious warning to all other mothers,” Ma Wender emphasized.
