Mother fights off man trying to kidnap her baby at train station
The 56-year-old was taken into custody following the alleged incident, which occurred on 28 July.
Security camera footage shows the mother and her child walking along the station platform when the man enters the frame and approaches them briskly. The woman appears to move away, prompting the man to follow her.
According to the arrest report, the man said to the woman: 'Give her to me."
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Mother of baby boy scalded by stranger in random hot coffee attack unleashes on the legal system a year after the monster responsible fled to China
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Daily Mail
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Father who tried to strangle daughter in Muslim ‘honor killing' is jailed for 32 months after shock verdict
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Judge Christine Schaller blasted Ihsan for his 'horrific actions' including the 'vicious assault on Fatima' outside Timberline High School in Lacey, Washington. The judge said she gave him maximum sentences because of the brutality of the crime and that Fatima was under Ihsan's care as his daughter. She said of his assault on Fatima's boyfriend: 'He victimized a defenseless young man for no reason and it is Isiah's good fortune that he was not more badly injured.' Judge Schaller also sentenced Zahraa for breaching a restraining order, which she already served in pretrial detention. Ihsan spent the past almost 10 months behind bars since his arrest days after the attack and will be credited with time served. Zahraa was released on July 31. Zahraa cried as Fatima, now 18, read an emotional victim impact statement to the court before the sentencing, calling Ihsan a 'monster' who tried to kill her with his own hands. Fatima told police she ran away from home after her parents tried to put her on a plane to Iraq. 'Her father had recently been threatening her with honor killing for refusing an arranged marriage with an older man in another county,' the initial police press release alleged. But this claim, central to the prosecution's original case last year, was completely absent from the three-week trial last month, by court order. Jurors were shown horrifying video footage of Ihsan grabbing Fatima by the throat before putting her in a chokehold on the ground outside the school. The footage is shocking, as were numerous witness accounts from traumatized teens, her boyfriend Isiah, and two men who stopped to help. 'Her face was looking pale and her eyes were starting to roll back,' Isiah, who was just 16 at the time, told the court through tears as he gave evidence. 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Judge Schaller also ruled before the trial that prosecutors couldn't bring up the arranged marriage or allow Fatima to talk in detail about a family trip to Iraq when she was 16. The veracity of the arranged marriage claim is less clear, but it was wholly denied by the defense during the trial. 'The entirety of the claims appears to be the result of Islamophobia,' Ihsan's lawyer Erik Kaeding wrote in his own memorandum. 'There is no evidence of either honor killing or arranged marriage supported by the evidence uncovered in the investigation of the case.' Ihsan's treatment of Fatima at home was also banned from being characterized as 'abuse'. The reason for Judge Schaller's rulings that stymied the prosecution's case was that their inclusion would unjustly prejudice the couple in the eyes of the jury. The result was a bizarre situation where everyone outside the court referred to the case as 'the honor killing trial' while inside the term was never uttered. Prosecutor Olivia Zhou didn't even mention the barbaric Muslim practice in her opening statement, or allude to any motive for murder. Fatima's testimony also didn't include the backstory she recounted to police in two-hour-long interviews in the days after she was attacked. Had the Daily Mail not obtained 100 pages of police reports detailing her interviews, and those with others, the public would never known the full alleged story. The evidence provided by Fatima in those interviews created a compelling argument for the thesis presented in Lacey Police Department arrest affidavits. They detailed her fears of being sent back to Iraq to be married off, after she saw how women were treated there during the trip when she was 16. Once her father found out she was dating Isiah, an American boy, he pulled her out of school and planned the arranged marriage, the story goes. When she protested, he allegedly threatened to kill her multiple times as he felt it would bring shame to his family. 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Numerous prosecution witness accounts focused on the horrifying effects of cutting off Fatima's airway during the chokehold. Much was also made of how Ihsan withstood 30 to 40 punches to the head by Isiah alone, plus dozens more from classmates who also kicked and stomped on him. Isiah claimed Ihsan had to be knocked out cold before he let go, and Wagner spoke of prying the father's arms apart enough to free her. In the most gut-wrenching moment of the trial, Fatima took to the stand to testify against her own parents. 'Did you have any fear?' Stone asked. 'Yes.' 'Fear of what?' 'Of dying,' Fatima choked out, her voice breaking into a sob. She was barely able to respond 'no' when asked if she could say anything during the attack. '[I'm] heartbroken for what my dad did,' she said, sobbing as she described losing consciousness four times during the attack. If Ihsan wasn't trying to kill her, why did he choke her for so long and refuse to let go despite the battering he took, the argument goes. 'She's unconscious, and he continues to strangle her around the neck for another 15-18 seconds and would have continued to do so even longer but for the intervention of those adults,' Stone told jurors. Physicians who examined Fatima in hospital spoke of the severity of her injuries, which left her ordered not to swallow anything for a whole day. She also had a condition where air in the lungs is forcefully expelled, but due to her airway being blocked it caused the same effect as popping a balloon. The defense countered with their own expert, saying the lung issue - and other injuries - could have been caused by the efforts to free her, and that they were relatively minor anyway. 'There's no nefarious intent. There's no intent to hurt anybody badly, there's no intent to kill anybody. There's an intent to take your daughter home, a 17-year-old daughter who's run away,' Kaeding argued in his closing statement. The case against Zahraa was even more problematic. Footage from the bus camera that was damning for Ihsan didn't clearly show anything Zahraa did as there were so many people standing around. Prosecutors instead leaned heavily on witness testimony alleging Zahraa had her arms around Fatima's neck, while the girl mouthed that she couldn't breathe. Zahraa's lawyer Tim Leary disputed this in his opening statement, portraying her as a concerned mother who was comforting her daughter by holding her. 'You will see my client, her mom, come and attempt to help her daughter,' he said of the video. 'She is holding her daughter, she's not holding on to her neck.' Leary, both in his opening statement and in cross-examination of Fatima, noted the teenager told police she didn't think her mother was trying to hurt her. 'She was just trying to protect me from the chaos,' Leary quoted. Fatima admitted this, but told the court it was more that she 'didn't want to believe' that her own mother would try to hurt her. But Stone in her closing statement insisted Zahraa appeared to also be strangling her. 'You can't strangle your child to restrain them,' she said. 'She watches Fatima being strangled by Ihsan. 'She then puts her own arms around Fatima's neck. She's not comforting her. She's strangling her to keep her from fleeing. 'And when you look at that video, you see she does not provide any aid at any time to her child, zero aid. That is not an effort to comfort her child.' Leary claimed that when Zahraa chased Fatima and Isiah inside the school, it was out of concern, not an attempt to finish a murder. 'What does my client do? She leaves her husband behind, she runs into the school. Where is my daughter? Where's my daughter?' he said in his opening. He concluded: 'That is the accusations against my client for what she did attempting to hold her daughter - in the state's eyes is the allegation of attempted murder.' Fatima is in extended foster care and, now an adult, cannot be compelled to return to her parents.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
The ‘serious risks' of fake Labubu dolls
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