Police at Kasoa, a sprawling market town in the Central Region, suspect a 34-year-old woman they are holding for the murder of her ailing mother may be suffering from a mental ailment.

Patience Asiedu Larbi, an unemployed polytechnic graduate who was arrested for driving a kitchen knife through the chest of her bedridden, 70-year-old mother who suffered from stroke for the past four years, told police she was inspired to carry out the act by a book she read on how to end the suffering of terminally ill persons.

Police claim they seized her on Monday sitting by the stabbed mother who lay dead in a pool of blood on her sick bed and also found hospital records suggesting Patience might be receiving psychiatry treatment at an unnamed hospital.

Family members told the police Patience was ‘not in her right frame of mind’ but had no previous case of violence, and police say her early comments upon arrest suggest she felt sorry for the mother’s situation. She considered her action as helping her mother rather than killing her.

ASP Mahama Arhin, Crime Officer at the police station, told Joy News’ Sammy Darko that Patience suggested the mother could not clean herself and thought her helplessness was bad enough.

“We opened the door and the knife was stuck to the chest of the mother dead in a pool of blood. The suspect was also sitting by the deceased and…so we arrested the suspect and sent the body to the Korle Bu morgue for autopsy and what she told me is if somebody is sick in bed for sometime and suffering, you help him to die. So the mother has been sick; she has been easing on herself all over… and it’s very bad for the mother that is why she killed the mother.”

Patience was to be arraigned before the Awutu-Beraku magistrate court on a provisional charge of murder.


Story by Isaac Yeboah