A mother is accused of strangling her youngest son and attempting to drown his older brother after becoming paranoid about the war.
41-year-old Natalia Hitchcock from Wisconsin was charged with first-degree intentional homicide after strangling her 8-year-old son, Oliver, to death with her bare hands on March 30.
The Russian-born mother is also facing the charge of attempted first-degree intentional homicide after trying to drown the boy’s 11-year-old sibling by daring him to hold his head underwater before pushing him deeper in an attempt to end his life.
Following her horrific actions, the mother overdosed and stabbed herself in the chest. According to a criminal complaint, she survived the incident after she was found at her apartment in Sheboygan Falls.
After coming back to consciousness, the mother was told that little Oliver had died from his injuries to which she allegedly responded by telling the cops: “Well, I guess I accomplished what I set out to do then.”
It has since come to light that Hitchcock became increasingly paranoid about the ongoing war in Ukraine where her husband, Jeff, was born. She was also experiencing bursts of anger over not being able to visit her family in Russia since the beginning of the war.
As the woman’s husband insisted, his wife started suffering from severe paranoia in the days leading to the murder. He insisted she was extremely angry and even ordered him to buy survival gear out of fear that her family would be attacked.
In the criminal complaint, the investigators also detailed the events of March 30 as witnessed by the woman’s surviving son whom she attempted to drown in a bathtub before taking the life of his brother.
“He said that after he went under the water he felt his mother’s hands on his head, pushing him down and at some point it felt like her whole body was pushing him down. He said he was able to get out from underneath her so she had not been keeping him under the water,” the report said.
“He described the water as not having been very high and indicated that if it had been higher he probably would have drowned.”
The complaint added how the 11-year-old survived the ordeal only to find his brother lifeless just moments later.
“When he got closer to [Oliver] he saw what he described as red dots on his face and that his feet were white. He said that he started screaming very loudly with [Jeff] entering and starting CPR,” the complaint says.
“He also said that his mother ended up in the kitchen with a different knife, which she held to her neck. At some point he exited the residence, ran and hid in the garage.”
Following her arrest, Natalie insisted she got “brain fog” after hearing voices in her head telling her what to do.
She also claimed she had set out to kill her family after she “began to have thoughts that the Russian government was going to take her children and abuse them.”
On Tuesday, Natalie appeared in court and apologized to her husband saying: “I’m so sorry. I love you guys. I don’t know what happened.”
If convicted, the 41-year-old could face life in prison.
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