4 days ago
SACRAMENTO, CA- A three year old girl was found dead Sunday morning in an apartment in the 7300 block of Greenhaven Drive.
Her mother, 31 year old Anul Ram, was arrested on suspicion of drowning the toddler. Ram is being held at Sacramento County Jail facing murder charges. No bail is available and according to jail records, Ram has an INS hold. She goes before a judge to answer to charges Tuesday afternoon.
"I think it's really really sad. It's devastating a mother would do something like that to their own child," said one resident.
The stunning news has left many residents at the Windbridge Village Apartments in Sacramento heartbroken.
When officers arrived early Sunday morning to do a welfare check, they located a 3 year old child--identified by a neighbor as "Divya". The girl was unresponsive and pronounced dead at the hospital. Her 7 year old brother Devin was not hurt.
A resident, who didn't want to be identified, says her son played with Ram's daughter. The mothers would always say "hi". Ram and the children seemed normal said the woman.
"I really can't see her do that," said the resident. "I just know her as a good mother. She was always at the swimming pool with her 2 kids. She seemed like she loved the kids and cared about them a lot."
The children's father called authorities around 1AM Sunday fearing that his estranged wife may have killed their 3 year old daughter. Ram had just picked up the children from the father's home.
News10 talked to the toddler's father. He did not want to comment.
News10 then sat down and talked to a neighbor and good friend of Anul Ram. She says Ram is a nurse and interested in hospice care. She doesn't believe Ram would ever hurt her own children. According to the neighbor, Ram was abused by her husband. And, Ram had been crying for the past week, concerned that her husband would take the children away.
The neighbor says she heard Ram turn on the shower early Sunday morning. Not long afterward, authorities arrived and tried to perform CPR on the child.
"The motive is still under investigation. It's hard to imagine why a mother would do this to her own child," said Konrad Von Schoech with the Sacramento Police Department.
Shiela Boxley, the C-E-O of The Child Abuse Prevention Council said this case is another example of how an intervention by friends or neighbors might have headed off a tragedy. "There seemed to be some evidence or some individuals saying that the mom had been crying all week long. That certainly would be an indication that the mom needs some support. There's needs to be some kind of intervention."
But upstairs neighbor Mindy Ma said she had no idea there were any problems. "Some people, they seem really nice," she said, "but inside them, they just have a lot of trouble with their life."
By Suzanne Phan, sphan@news10.net
News10/KXTV
