Baby killer ‘refused medication’

OTTY SANCHEZ, a schizophrenic with a history of hospitalisations who butchered her son this week, refused to take medication for her postpartum depression, her son’s father said.

She’d been going to regular counselling and had been briefly hospitalised since the boy was born.

But the 33-year-old woman’s troubles only became apparent to authorities when they found her before dawn on Sunday, in a house where she had access to samurai swords, screaming that she had killed her baby. Her three-week-old son was dismembered in a scene so gruesome police were left shaken. Three of his tiny toes had been chewed off, his face torn away, his head severed and his brains had been ripped out.

Sanchez apparently ate the child’s brain and some other body parts before stabbing herself.

“Maybe we missed” warning signs, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said. “I don’t know.”

Sanchez was released on Tuesday from a hospital where she was treated for self-inflicted cuts to her torso and an attempt to slice her own throat. The former home health care worker, charged with capital murder, is being held at Bexar County Jail on $1 million (€712,200) bond.

Authorities said Sanchez attempted suicide after butchering her newborn son, Scott Wesley Buchholz-Sanchez, with a steak knife and two swords while her sister and two nieces, ages five and seven, slept in another room.

Sanchez told police that the devil made her kill, mutilate and eat parts of her only child.

Scott W Buchholz, the infant’s father who met Sanchez six years ago while they were studying to be pharmacists’ assistants, said although his girlfriend had postpartum depression and only recently told him she was schizophrenic, she didn’t appear unstable. He wants prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.

“She killed my son. She should burn in hell,” said Buchholz, 33.

Otty Sanchez’s medical history is muddled. A family member said Sanchez had undergone psychiatric treatment.

Buchholz, who is himself schizophrenic, said Otty had postpartum depression and had been going to counselling after the birth, but refused to take prescription medication for her depression. Still, “she seemed like a very caring, loving mother,” he said.