Grandmother who murdered 23-day-old grandchild sentenced to 13 years in prison

According to the indictment of the Procuracy, defendant Pham Thi Xuan entered the house of her son, Mr. Le Van Thuan (residing in Quarter 1, Bac Son Ward, Bim Son Town, Thanh Hoa) to take care of her grandchild LMA (Mrs. Xuan's grandchild who was only 23 days old).

At around 6:45 p.m. on November 25, 2017, while holding her grandchild to sleep, the child woke up, so Ms. Xuan immediately got up to put the child back to sleep. At that time, A.'s mother was in the room, and Mr. Thuan went to pick up his son from martial arts class. While walking, Ms. Xuan accidentally fell and fell on top of A.

Ms. Xuan was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

After standing up, Mrs. Xuan hurriedly picked up baby A. and saw that he was wheezing, hiccuping, his head tilted back and milk was flowing out of his mouth.

Instead of calling for everyone to take A. to the emergency room, Mrs. Xuan thought that the child would die. Fearing that her two children would blame her, Mrs. Xuan came up with the idea of ​​​​hiding the incident by taking the blanket that was covering her child's body, covering his face, and carrying him out to the street, walking to the grassy area about 30m from the house in the cold weather. When she saw a blue plastic bag, Mrs. Xuan immediately put A. in the bag, tied it tightly, and hid it in the grassy area so that no one would find out.

After that, Ms. Xuan returned and pretended to faint in front of her neighbor's house, creating a fake scene of a child kidnapping. After her family discovered her and brought Ms. Xuan into the house, she told everyone that two subjects, one male and one female, entered the house with knives, controlled and threatened her.

After the couple grabbed Ms. Xuan's hair, covered her mouth and dragged her out onto the street, the female subject snatched the baby from Ms. Xuan's arms, the male subject got on his motorbike and knocked Ms. Xuan down, then both escaped from the scene.

On the evening of November 25, 2017, the investigation agency invited Ms. Xuan to the headquarters for questioning. There, Ms. Xuan still confessed that A. had been kidnapped by a couple. A day later, Ms. Xuan was allowed to return home.

At around 8:00 p.m. on November 26, 2017 (one day after the incident), fearing being discovered, Ms. Xuan took a bucket of household trash and an orange bag of snake carcasses and pretended to take out the trash. Next, Ms. Xuan took A.'s body, which was wrapped in a plastic bag, put it in the snake carcasses, tied it with a rope, and covered it with a trash bag.

The next morning, the garbage truck collected the garbage, including A.'s body, and sent it to Dong Son ward, Bim Son town. The incident was exposed when a scrap collector at the landfill discovered A.'s body in a sack with the name Thuan written on it and the phone number of the child's father.

Using professional measures, on November 27, 2017, Pham Thi Xuan turned herself in, confessed to being the perpetrator of A.'s death and staged a child kidnapping scene to conceal her actions.

Pursuant to the provisions of law and on the basis of considering the circumstances, the Trial Panel sentenced the defendant Pham Thi Xuan to 13 years in prison for the above crime.