A 12-year-old girl was found suffocated in her family home on Monday in Valencia, and her mother injured from a stab wound that she may have inflicted on herself, we learned on Tuesday from a police source.
The young teenager died between 3:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. following suffocation. The mother, injured in the abdomen, was hospitalized without her life threatening, the same source said.
It could be a suicide attempt, the mother possibly having stabbed herself, after an infanticide, possibly due to a crisis related to the young girl’s autism, according to the police.
The intervention of a third party is however not excluded, the child and the mother bearing traces of a struggle, according to the same source.
The Valencia public prosecutor’s office specified in a press release that the mother, aged 39, had indicated to the emergency services, which she called herself, “to have found her daughter inert the same morning in her bed”.
“The emergency services noted that she had injuries that she said she had caused herself, without her life being in danger,” said the Valence prosecutor, Laurent de Caigny, in the press release.
The forensic doctor did not rule out the possibility that she could have inflicted the injuries on herself. On the other hand, he noticed “no wound” on the girl.
“In view of the first elements”, several hypotheses arose, “including one” suggesting “a purely accidental death”, according to the prosecutor, who did not give further details.
The mother described as “supportive and caring with her child”
The state of health was considered incompatible with the custody of the mother, who remained hospitalized.
The autopsy of the minor “did not reveal elements (…) suggesting the intervention of a third party”, according to the prosecution.
“The forensic doctor is moving towards a medical cause of death which can only be confirmed by additional toxicological, anatomo-pathological and bacteriological examinations,” adds the press release.
The mother is described as “supportive and caring with her child”, according to the prosecutor.