A mother has been accused of stabbing her newborn son to death with a pair of nail scissors before throwing the body into a trash can.
Mother-of-three Anastasia Skorychenko has been sentenced to two years in jail for allegedly stabbing her newborn 22 times, just moments after delivering him on her balcony.
The 30-year-old confessed to the crime during the sentencing in a court in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, last week.
Skorychenko explained the motive for the crime by saying "the baby was unwanted" and "she could not afford it", according to reports.
Anastasia Skorychenko and one of her older children
Skorychenko, who kept her third pregnancy secret, went into labour at home.
She began having contractions at night when her two daughters, aged 7 and 4, and their grandmother were sleeping.
Not wanting to wake them up, Skorychenko reportedly went to the balcony where she bent over a plastic basin and gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
The woman used her nail scissors to cut the umbilical cord, the court was told.
After that, she pressed her left hand against the newborn’s face to prevent him from crying and started stabbing him with the scissors she was holding in her right hand, according to the court records.
A prosecutor said during the sentencing: “The mother inflicted 22 stab and cut wounds in the neck, chest, abdomen and limbs of the baby.
“The injuries of varying degrees of severity were inflicted shortly before the child’s death.”
When the boy’s body went limp, Skorychenko put him into a plastic bag, carried it outside and threw into a rubbish container near her apartment block, investigators said.
The following morning, the newborn’s mutilated body was spotted by a local female resident who called an ambulance and the police.
Skorychenko confessed to the murder during a police check and was arrested several hours after the corpse was found, it is reported.
The woman did not want the baby and believed her third child would worsen her family’s financial situation, the Zavodskoy District Court heard.
The mother has not been suffering from any mental disorders or postpartum depression and planned the crime beforehand, examinations showed.
On January 5, 2021, Anastasia Skorychenko was charged with premeditated murder of her child and sentenced to two years in prison.
Judges took into account the fact that the mother admitted her guilt and softened their decision, according to local media.
