‘I was in a trance when I slaughtered my two kids’

Hassana was said to have slaughtered her two children – a six-year-old daughter, Hussaina and her one and a half year old son, Joseph on July 20, 2009 and afterwards – attempted to commit suicide. She was saved by neighbours who rushed her to the Biu General Hospital where she was treated before the case […]

Hassana was said to have slaughtered her two children – a six-year-old daughter, Hussaina and her one and a half year old son, Joseph on July 20, 2009 and afterwards – attempted to commit suicide. She was saved by neighbours who rushed her to the Biu General Hospital where she was treated before the case was transferred to the state police headquarters.

She said she found herself in a trance and only realized she had killed the children after using a knife to slit their throats.

She told Weekly Trust that she loved her children but on that fateful day, while her husband, Philip Girbi, was away, “I entered into the house and the entire room was dark. I didn’t know what took over me. I just saw myself with a knife. I do not know where it came from and I used it to cut their throats one after the other. It was after I had killed them that I realized that they were my children. I then used the same knife to stab myself. Then the knife fell and I think I must have collapsed too because I cannot remember what happened afterwards. I just found myself in the hospital.”

Her husband was said to have been dumbfounded when he returned to find the corpse of his two children in the room and a crowd in the compound who had come to sympathize with him on the death of his children.

Our correspondent learnt that trouble started when during her last pregnancy, there were complications and she was transferred from a health centre in Marama to a hospital in Jos where she underwent a caesarean operation but in the end, the baby died. “When I was discharged, I experienced complications with my urinary tract and I had to undergo another surgery. Afterwards, the doctors warned that we must go back there in the event of another pregnancy. But my husband refused, saying he was fed up and if I want medical care, I should go to my mother,” she narrated.

So she had a quarrel with her husband after that and then decided to kill the children and herself so that her husband would eventually lose everyone he loved.

But could she have acted as a result of her clinical condition after losing her baby and then the urinal tract surgery or even dissatisfaction with her marriage? A medical expert told our correspondent that she could have suffered from postnatal depression, otherwise known as postpartum depression (PPD), saying it is a condition which mostly affects women after childbirth and could occur after they have carried a child, usually in the first few months or even a year and above. The woman may then experience sadness, fatigue, changes in sleeping and eating patterns, reduced sexual urge, crying episodes, anxiety and irritability, he explained.

Research shows that it is sometimes caused by lack of vitamins or more likely by significant changes in a woman’s hormones during pregnancy.

As it is, until the result of the insanity test prescribed by the presiding judge, Justice Alkali Gana Wakil, to ascertain and evaluate her mental state is available, the reason why Hassana will murder her own children in cold blood will remain a mystery.