Mother stabs children to death after begging GP to call social services

A mentally ill woman stabbed her two young sons to death just hours after begging her GP to call social services. Jael Mullings, 22, killed two-year-old Romario Mullings-Sewell, and Delayno, who was just four months old, after smoking large quantities of strong “skunk” cannabis.

Despite making a plea for help she refused to see a doctor and by the time police arrived at her home she had already knifed the boys in the chest and fled.
 
She was locked up indefinitely in a secure psychiatric hospital at Manchester Crown Court after admitting manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

A serious case review and an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission are now under way in order to find out why officers failed to stop Mullings before the killings.

Judge John Griffiths-Williams told her: “This is, on any view, a desperately tragic case. You were clearly devoted to Romario and Delayno, but for some time you have suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

“I have no doubt you will carry the very heavy burden of your responsibility for ending their lives for as long as you live.

“I am satisfied your mental responsibility for your actions were so substantially impaired you require treatment, not punishment.”

The court heard that she had smoked cannabis since she had been 13, and had been diagnosed with depression after her elder son’s birth. She later abandoned him at her GP surgery in Manchester with a note saying that she “cannot cope”.

Social workers were called in to help but in April last year her case was closed as she appeared to be doing well.

But then after her younger son’s birth she began taking more drugs and smoked £60 worth of cannabis in the two days before the killings, then attempted to circumcise both boys with the same kitchen knife with which she later killed them.

Just before 9am on November 12 she telephoned the Cheetham Hill Medical Centre “shouting and screaming” and saying: “I can’t cope. Get social services. Come and get my kids please.”

But Mullings refused to give her name to the receptionist, and was seen outside throwing her children’s pushchair and pointing at strangers.

At 12.40pm she made another call to the GP surgery and was heard on the phone swearing and shouting at her children. She refused an appointment, and when a doctor went to her house she had a “very strange and agitated look in her eyes” and slammed the door in his face.

The surgery then contacted police, but by the time officers visited the house Mullings had left to go to her aunt’s home where she claimed to be the Virgin Mary and confessed to the killings. The boys’ bodies were then found dead on a bed at their home.

Mullings later claimed “random voices” had been egging her on to kill her sons.