Warning: This story contains details which some readers may find upsetting.
Police in Moscow arrested a woman today on suspicion of murder after she was found allegedly carrying the severed head of a child through the streets of the city.
According to
BBC News, the individual is believed to have been the victim’s nanny and she is suspected of killing the child before setting fire to its parents’ apartment.
She was captured on camera near a metro station in the Russian capital before police officers arrived at the scene and detained her.
The remains of a child aged three or four were found in a flat in northwest Moscow with signs of a violent death earlier on Monday.
The woman has apparently been placed in psychiatric care and the criminal investigation is ongoing. The motive of the horrific crime is not yet known but it has been said that the authorites are not treating it as terror-related.
The Moscow Investigative Committee
reportedly released a statement which said: "According to preliminary information, the child's nanny – a native of one of the Central Asian countries, born in 1977 – waited until the parents left the apartment with their elder child and, guided by unknown motives, killed the little one, set the apartment on fire and left the scene."
Amateur footage has emerged online of the woman outside the metro station. She is dressed in black and witnesses say she was shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God Is Great”).
