A mother who pushed her two sons into a river and watched them drown is being charged with their murder in a Swedish court.
The 31 year-old was arrested in September last year after Elias, 4, and Tevin, 8, were both found dead in a swimming area in Sigtuna near Stockholm.
After first denying responsibility, the woman later admitted to pushing the boys, neither of whom could swim, into the water. She claims she also planned to kill herself afterwards but couldn’t go through with it.
“Tevin didn’t scream but Elias screamed for a long time,” she told police, according to Aftonbladet newspaper. “It was loud and he shouted ‘no, no, no’. We were all supposed to die,” she added.
“I just stood there and cried. The idea was that I would jump in too, but I was too scared,” she said, according to the paper.
The woman, who is now in a psychiatric hospital after tests revealed she is suffering from a serious mental illness, was apparently experiencing severe financial problems at the time of the deaths and had become increasingly unstable.
“I felt I couldn’t take care of them. That it would be easier if we all died. I had let them down. I had lost all hope of taking care of them,” she apparently told police.
Eva Möller, the mother’s lawyer, told Expressen that her client is “is terribly upset about what she has done”.
”I regret everything. I have killed my children and don’t know how I will be able to live,” said the woman during the trial, according to the newspaper.