Woman Stabs her Daughter Claiming Child Possessed by Demons

One has to wonder if there wasn't some indication that this was going to happen. One has to wonder if there were not indications that could have alerted someone that there was a problem that was brewing. One has to wonder, could there not have been some sign, some symptom, that was evident that could have prevented the death of a six year old little girl?

A Waukegan woman charged with fatally stabbing her 6-year-old daughter initially told police the girl was possessed, attacked her with a knife in bed and slammed her into a wall before the mother grabbed the weapon and slashed her daughter's neck, Lake County prosecutors said in court Tuesday.

Nelly Vazquez-Salazar, 25, later admitted there was no attack and that she stabbed her daughter, Evelyn Vazquez, after she awoke and found the girl on her bed holding a knife, they said.

Sobbing throughout her bond hearing, Vazquez-Salazar listened through a Spanish interpreter as prosecutor Stephen Scheller laid out to Circuit Judge Dan Shanes the details to support first-degree murder charges against her.

Investigators have stated that from all accounts, after interviewing the little girls teachers and others who knew her, the demon possession claim by her mother was far from the truth, with one investigator stating, "she was an angel."

Neighbors say they were awakened by Vazquez-Salazar at around 4:30 in the morning, finding Vazquez-Salazar pounding on their door, hysterical and begging to use the telephone to call 911. 6 year old Evelyn was found dead in her bedroom from multiple stab wounds to her upper body and neck, according to Coroner Richard Keller. Her mother was found to have cuts on her arms and hands. She was not injured when she called for help from the neighbors apartment.

Vazquez-Salazar remains in custody pending a $5 million bail. She has been charged with first degree murder; her next court date is set for May 1st. Police say that there are no indications of drug or alcohol abuse, nor problems with mental illness in her background.

My question is: what snapped. What happened. What makes a woman who has been a mother for 6 years suddenly take a knife and attack her child with it, killing her?

It frankly baffles me.

I'm sure that there will be no conclusive answers to come from this case. At least nothing satisfactory to explain why a mother would kill her own child, especially in such a horrendous way. Psychologists will attempt to offer all sorts of explanations at her trial. Lawyers will make claims of this and that about how the woman is a victim of some societal ill or another in an attempt to get her off the hook, probably on some sort of insanity plea.

Whatever the reason, whatever the real motivation was for this, there is one thing that to me is clear. The demon wasn't in the child...

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man


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