Police are investigating a mother’s alleged cannibalism claims after she was charged with murdering her four-year-old son on the NSW Central Coast.
The woman, 32, walked into Wyong Police Station on Saturday afternoon, and concerned officers rushed to a unit in the same suburb to do a welfare check where they found the boy dead with significant arm injuries.
Detectives are now looking into whether cannibalism was a factor in the boy’s death, police sources told The Sydney Morning Herald.
According to The Daily Telegraph, police developed “grave concerns” after the mother made references to cannibalism after turning up at the station.
Officers are also investigating whether the boy had been dead for days before being found, and the mother’s car was seized for forensic examination, Nine News reported.
A post-mortem will be conducted by the coroner to determine the cause of death.
The mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons and was previously known to police, was charged with domestic violence murder on Sunday morning.
She did not apply for bail, which was formally refused, and will face court again in September.
NSW Police Superintendent Chad Gillies said police and other emergency services workers found an “extremely confronting” scene after arriving at the unit.
“Whenever a child is a victim of violent crime, and whenever a child is murdered, it strikes at the core of community,” he said.
“That’s why it’s absolutely important to work through this methodically. We try to understand what’s happened, why it’s happened, and from my perspective, we owe that to that little boy to make sure that we get the exact circumstances and present them to the court in due course.”
A neighbour who used to babysit the boy, Harley Chislett, said he was an “angel of a kid”.
“He used to come down and play with the dog 24-7 … just typical four-year-old, run amok, the happiest kid I’ve seen around at that age,” he said.
Header image: Left, the four-year-old boy. Right, the crime scene (Nine News).
