A 3-year-old boy from Michigan was found stabbed to death on May 6, and his mother has been charged with the child's murder, according to the report posted by Detroit News.
Mother in custody
The mother of the boy, Atiya Nina Muhammed, has been charged with first-degree premeditated murder, felony murder, child abuse, and torture, according to court records. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said that the 26-year-old suspect was arraigned on May 10.
The police from Inkster, a small town about 20 miles west of Detroit in Wayne County, said that relatives found 3-year-old Zion Reid on May 6 when they had not heard from the mother in several days and went to the home to check on her. The Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office said that Reid suffered from multiple stab wounds and blunt force trauma injuries. The child's body was found in a back bedroom.
When the police arrived at around 4 p.m, Muhammed was not in the home, but she was located and immediately taken into custody less than two hours later.
Similar incident
In May 2013, an 8-year-old boy named Gabriel Fernandez was rushed to the hospital after his mother, Pearl Fernandez called 911. Paramedics found the boy not breathing and badly hurt, which Pearl claimed was the result of a fall that he'd suffered while playing with his older brother.
However, in the days that followed, the true extent of Gabriel's injuries would become clear. The boy's throat was burned, his face was covered in bruises and cuts, his eyes were blackened, he had abrasions on the top of his feet, his teeth were knocked out, he had a weird incision above his penis and ligature marks on his ankles, and cigarette burns all over his body, and a fractured skull.There were also BB gun pellets lodged in his lung and his groin.
The horrific condition of the boy inspired director Brian Knappenberger to create a docuseries "The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez" that focused on the urgent plight to save the boy's life and on prosecutors Jonathan Hatami and Scott Yang's efforts to build a case against the parents, Isauro and Pearl Fernandez, who would be tried separately for first-degree murder with extreme circumstances.
Domestic abuse in the United States
According to the Resource Center on Domestic Violence, around 4 million referrals for alleged maltreatment were made to child protective agencies in 2015. From these reports, an estimated 683,000 children in the United States were officially documented as having been maltreated.
Children from birth to age three had the highest rate of victimization which is around 27.7% and slightly more than half of all victims were girls, which is around 50.9%. In overall prevalence, physical abuse was second to neglect. The figures represent just a fraction of all abuse and neglect in that year, with numerous acts of child maltreatment going unreported to protective service agencies.
Researchers have also estimated that between 3 million and 10 million children are exposed to adult domestic violence every year and one researcher has estimated that at least 10% to 20% of children are exposed to intimate partner violence every year, with as many as one-third exposed at some point during childhood or adolescence.
