Indian mother drowns her baby in Florida, says, she hated him

Mtoday news / ITV

Tampa, Florida, Feb 19: Neha Patel of Lakeland, Florida was arrested on Friday  at the parking lot of Tampa International Airport on charge of drowing her one-year-old son Ishan in a half-full bathtub, reports New York Daily News.

Neha told police she intended to kill herself by jumping off the garage roof, but stopped during two approaches as there were too many people around.

The young mother has now been charged with first-degree murder. Neha  says she hated her baby son from the day he was born and felt he was responsible for her state of mind.

 

 

The woman  allegedly slapped  Ishan, then purposefully left him alone in a hall-full bathtub.

Returning 10 minutes later to find the infant unconscious, she refused to do CPR even though she knew what to do, the sheriff’s office said

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the cause of death was blunt force trauma at the hands of his mother. Patel may have been suffering from post-natal depression, investigators say.

Post-natal depression, caused by a chemical, hormonal imbalance,  affects 10 to 15 percent of women. The pharmacist was home alone with her son on Thursday when the alleged murder took place.

When he started to crawl toward her she smacked him because she hated to be near him and wanted to discourage him from coming close to her, the sheriff’s office said.

After getting him up from a nap she put him in the bath, which at the time was half full of water, and left him on his own , investigators said.

When she returned and found the infant unconscious she allegedly did not attempt CPR or call 911 but instead dressed the child and took a bizarre drive around the area.

With the child’s body in the car she went to nearby supermarket, then home, then to Ocala, then to Tampa International Airport, the sheriff’s office said.

Patel knew her son was dead because he had turned ’blue’ and was ’cold to the touch.’

Neha’s  husband, Rasesh Patel, had last seen his son alive at 7.20 am Thursday when he left to take the couple’s four-year-old daughter to preschool and go to work.

He attempted to phone home between 10.30 am and 12.30 pm before returning home at 1.30 pm to find them gone, deputies said.

That evening he called police to report his wife and son missing, saying Neha was depressed and he was worried as she hadn’t been taking her medication, Eleazer said.

Around 2am Friday morning she returned home and put the baby boy in his crib, telling her husband she drowned him, investigators say.

But when she heard him on the telephone to relatives she took off again for the airport telling her husband she would rather die than go to prison.

’I will be dead by tomorrow,’ she told her husband, the Miami Herald reported.

The mother-of two had been acting strangely all week.

She resigned from her job as a CVS pharmacist on February 12, and talked about suicide.

She said she would like to die in the Smoky Mountains, her husband told authorities.