Woman charged with aggravated murder of 6-year-old son found fit to stand trial
However, psychological report says Sigal Yana Itzkovich was in a ‘psychotic state’ at the time she stabbed son and dog to death, had ‘lost her grip on reality’
A woman charged with the murder of her six-year-old son is fit to stand trial, although she was in a hallucinatory and psychotic state at the time she carried out the killing, a court-ordered assessment of her mental health has found.
The report was submitted to the Tel Aviv District Court on Sunday, a month after a murder indictment was filed against Sigal Yana Itzkovich for the killing of her son, Liam, earlier this year. After killing her son, Itzkovich prowled the street of the coastal city Herzliya where she lives, brandishing a knife which she later used to attack a security guard, lightly injuring him before she was detained.
“On the day she committed the acts attributed to her, Sigal was in an active psychotic state which was reflected in her holding on to hallucinatory thoughts about aliens who inhabit the earth and communicate with her,” the assessment found, according to Hebrew media reports.
“The symptoms caused the defendant to lose her grip on reality — loss of control over her behavior and impairment of her ability to differentiate between good and bad and between what is forbidden and what is permitted,” it said.
In July, an initial psychiatric assessment of Itzkovich was unable to determine unequivocally whether she was fit to stand trial.
An assessment from the defense is to be submitted to the court at a later date.
Itzkovich was indicted in August with the aggravated murder of her son, as well as charges relating to aggravated assault, killing an animal, and obstruction of justice.
At the time, reports said she told the court that her family had been “abducted by aliens and we suffered atrocities in a spaceship.”
She reportedly claimed she and her son were subjected to “invasive alien examinations” of their bodies and that there are aliens “walking around among us.”
During police questioning, Itzkovich reportedly claimed that she took drugs and drank nail polish before killing her son, an act that she was said to have confessed to. Itzkovich was said to tell police that she heard aliens who told her that, in cooperation with the CIA, they had planted a chip in her body causing her to commit the murder. She was said to have expressed remorse for the killing while asserting that she was unaware of her actions at the time.
According to prosecutors, Itzkovich was alone with her son on July 16 when she took a kitchen knife, stabbed her dog, and then stabbed her son dozens of times in the bathtub, killing him.
The intensity of the attack broke the knife, and left a tip of the blade in her son’s skull, prosecutors said.
Itzkovich then returned to kill the dog with a knife and axe, after hearing its wailing, the statement said.
The accused allegedly washed the knife, changed clothes, and then walked toward the Seven Stars Mall in Herzliya, still covered in blood. On her way, she attacked a passerby and drove her axe into the hood of a car. Arriving at the mall, she attacked a security guard who eventually subdued her.
In a video disseminated on social media, Itzkovich could be seen walking toward the entrance of the mall while holding an axe and intermittently grinning. She is barefoot, and her face and legs are streaked with blood.
הרצליה קניון שבעת הכוכבים:
אישה כנראה בהתקף פסיכוטי רדפה אחר מאבטח עם גרזן, דקרה אותו, לאחר מכן הלכה לכניסה לקניון התפשטה עשתה מדיטציה ודקרה את עצמה בחזה.. pic.twitter.com/afXN3ynCko— מה חדש. What's new❓ (@Gloz111) July 16, 2024
Liam’s body was discovered in the family’s home by his grandmother. His father was serving as a reserve soldier in the Gaza Strip at the time of the killing. Though the family was not known to welfare services, there was reportedly an incident of violence in the past that was resolved by police.
