Warning: Graphic content
Russian police arrested a woman holding a child’s severed head outside a Moscow subway station on Monday, officials said.
The woman — later identified as a 39-year-old nurse — had the head in her hands and was threatening to activate a bomb, authorities said.
She was screaming, “I am your death!” “I’m a terrorist!” and “Allahu Akbar!” at passersby, but no explosives were found on her, witnesses told police.
“I was on my way to the metro station from home. She was standing near the metro entrance and caught my attention because she was screaming Allahu Akbar,” said journalist Polina Nikolskaya, who witnessed the gruesome scene.
“I saw that she had a bloodied head in her arms but I thought it was not real. People in the crowd said it was real.”
Cops later linked the suspect to a fire in an apartment in northwest Moscow, where the headless body of a 4-year-old was found, officials said.
“The child was found without the head. The nurse took the head away,” police spokeswoman Yulia Ivanova told TASS news agency. “The woman waited till the parents and the elder child are gone and killed the toddler, setting the apartment on fire.”
Law enforcement sources told Interfax news agency the suspect is 38-year-old Gyulchekhra Bobokulova, an immigrant from Uzbekistan.
Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, called the crime “monstrous and inexplicable.”