Helen confessed to her crime when she was questioned by the police.
Trigger Warning: The story has descriptions of violence that readers may find disturbing.
Summer holidays mean spending time with family and especially grandparents. For any child, their grandmas and grandpas always come after their parents because they are the only ones who can love them more than their parents.
Grandparents are also the ones we can count on for our child's safety because we know that they can never harm our children. They have seen the world more than us and know how dangerous it can be so they will do anything to protect them. But there is one grandma who thought harming the child and sending him to heaven would be better for a 4-year-old than living in this world.
A 56-year-old woman in Kokomo, Indiana, drowned her 4-year-old grandson in a bathtub because she thought "he was better off in heaven." The woman, identified as Helen Martin, was suffering from severe depression according to her husband and at the time of the incident was going through one of the worst depressive episodes in her life.
Kokomo, Indiana grandmother drowns 4 year old grandson cause she was depressed https://t.co/xvbx06u0Fc #Helen Martin
— Scallywagandvagabond (@ScallywagNYC) March 31, 2020
Her husband Brian divulged that on Sunday, March 29, when he was out for some work, Helen had been giving their grandson a bath.
Later, he got a call from her saying she had drowned the kid after which he rushed home and called the police. While Helen was arrested, emergency services were called to the 400 Block of East 400 South residence, where they tried hard to revive the child. Unfortunately, he was declared unconscious and unresponsive.
According to police documents, as reported by the Kokomo Tribune, Brian told the officials that Helen had climbed into the bathtub along with her grandson and then drowned him by holding his head underwater. It was he who pulled the child out of the bathtub after he returned.
Helen confessed to her crime when she was questioned by the police. She has been charged with one felony, and crimes of murder and neglect of a dependent resulting in death. It was during the interrogation that the police found out Helen was the child's guardian.
Revealing the details of the crime, the court documents stated that she decided to give the child a bath after her husband left. Following the murder, Helen changed into fresh clothes and then called her husband to tell him what she had done. However, she told the police that she doesn't remember calling Brian after the crime.
Her motive for the murder was quite clear. When asked she said that "she believed that she had been so depressed recently that she thought he would be better off in heaven than to be with her."
According to People, Helen told the investigators that she had been suffering from depression and severe mental health problems. She also revealed that due to a "past abusive marriage, depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder," she suffered from PTSD and sometimes had memory lapses.
The 4-year-boy would have never imagined that the grandma with whom he spent so much time and made memories would be the one who delivers him to God's abode even before he could learn how life was supposed to be.
The little boy was rushed to the hospital after he was attended by medical personnel but the innocent boy's life could not be saved. Helen has been in Howard County's jail since the incident without bond.
According to an update by Kokomo Perspective that was reported on June 30, 2020, Helen may use the defense of insanity in court. We hope that the family found the strength to face such a tragic loss and also that the boy is now at peace, wherever he is.
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