Mother charged with murder for allegedly suffocating, punching 3-year-old daughter
Suad Ali (Courtesy: Otter Tail County Detention Facility)
A Pelican Rapids woman is charged with one count of second-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder after allegedly killing her daughter on Monday night.
On July 10, officers responded to a home along River Road near Third Street Northeast in Pelican Rapids at around 9:40 p.m. on a report of a 3-year-old girl who was unresponsive, according to court records. They found the girl lying on the living room floor of the home with a witness kneeling and shouting over her.
Officials noted in the criminal complaint that 27-year-old Suad Mohamed Ali, the girl’s mother, was sitting on the couch. When asked what happened, Ali stated that she killed her.
Ali told law enforcement that she placed her hand over the child’s mouth and suffocated her after the girl was continuously crying. She added that she had tried to stab her daughter with a knife earlier in the night but was unsuccessful. The complaint noted that officers found a knife on the arm of the couch.
Ali told law enforcement that she purposefully tried to kill her daughter.
Officials began CPR and the girl was brought to Essentia St. Mary in Detroit Lakes where she later died, court records say.
The initial autopsy report stated that the girl had a bite mark on her left cheek, focal subgaleal hemorrhages of the head and focal subarachnoid hemorrhages of the brain. The official autopsy results are still pending.
During a subsequent interview, Ali told law enforcement she lived on River Road with her mother and family. She added that the girl’s father had left them and she was raising her daughter with her mother; she said on Monday night the girl was crying and asking for food but Ali’s mother usually feeds her and she wasn’t there.
The complaint said Ali described to law enforcement how she punched her daughter in the throat so she wasn’t crying anymore. She told officers that at that point, her daughter wasn’t breathing.
Ali also told officers she was lonely, did not have a man in her life and she takes her anger out on her children, noting that her daughter did not deserve it.