Friends, neighbours and the child’s own father are described as shocked by the news that “killer-mom” Ana Lúcia Cunha has been released from psychiatric care three years after stabbing her six-year-old daughter to death to live in the same apartment in Alenquer as her remaining 11-year-old child. Against incredulity that authorities could agree to such a state of affairs, the child’s French father is believed to be filing for custody.
Lawyers are reported to be keen to remove his only remaining child, particularly as her grandmother – who has been acting as the child’s guardian – is understood to be leaving her for most of the day in the company of her mother, writes Correio da Manhã.
The national tabloid reports that Ana Lúcia Cunha was not in fact convicted of any crime when she stabbed her youngest child Lara to death in Nice, France, in July 2012.
She was considered “unimputable” by law, as she had been suffering from a psychotic episode.
The horror played out while Ana Lúcia’s eldest daughter Vera was away on holiday with her grandmother.
Judges ruled that the 40-year-old killer should be interned in a psychiatric unit in France, which she was until earlier this year – at which point she managed to get a transfer to an institution in Portugal, reports CM
Two months ago that institution released Ana Lúcia – now described as “heavily medicated and very physically debilitated”.
In the neighbourhood where the family lives, neighbours are described as “fearing” for the safety of 11-year-old Vera.
One has told CM how she often hears the child crying. “The best thing that could happen to her is that she is handed over to a family who will raise her,” the woman concluded.
The paper adds that after Ana Lúcia killed her youngest child, she tried to kill herself, before appearing at her apartment window to shout into the street below: “I have killed my daughter.”
