These are the faces of evil killer mums after their heinous crimes in the Midlands shocked the world. The lives of young victims were cruelly taken away by someone they should have been able to trust the most.
Parents have been jailed after a number of tragedies unfolded over the last few years. One mum stabbed her ten-year-old daughter to death as she slept in her bed.
A university student left her newborn baby in a box and another new mum dumped her baby in a bin bag.
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BirminhgamLive has taken a look back at some of the tragic cases from 2024 and recent years.
Jaskirat Kang
Jaskirat Kaur also known as Jaskirat Kang
(Image: WMP)
A mum killed her ten-year-old daughter at their home while she slept in her bed earlier this year. Shay Kang was found dead at her home on Robin Close on March 4.
Jaskirat Kaur, 33, from Rowley Regis, called emergency services to report the death of her child. When officers arrived, Kaur, also known as ‘Jaskirat Kang’, was arrested and admitted to stabbing Shay the previous night.
Following a forensic post mortem examination, it was found Shay was stabbed multiple times to the chest. Kaur was taken into custody and was subsequently charged with her murder.
She admitted guilty manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at an earlier hearing. She was later sentenced to a hospital order in a secure facility.
Jia Xin Teo
Jia Xin Teo
(Image: WMP)
A university student killed her newborn baby after placing her in a cereal box shortly after birth.
Jia Xin Teo, 22, of Coventry, had concealed her pregnancy and gave birth to a full-term baby on March 4. She placed her in a cereal box, then inside a sealable plastic bag and then into a suitcase.
By the time police discovered her little body two-days later, the baby was dead. Teo, a student from Malaysia who arrived in the United Kingdom earlier this year to study at Coventry University, had denied murdering her baby.
She told how she had been hearing voices which told her to kill the baby, however a jury rejected that defence and found her guilty of murder. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and will serve a minimum term of 17 years following a hearing at Warwick Crown Court in October.
Paris Mayo
Paris Mayo
(Image: West Mercia Police)
A new mum killed her son hours after giving birth. Paris Mayo, then 15, suffocated the boy after stuffing cotton wool into his throat.
The teenager delivered him alone at her family home while her parents were upstairs in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, March 2019. Her trial was told she had assaulted her son named Stanley and left him with injuries “comparable to those seen in a car crash.”
The newborn was later dumped in a bin bag and left on the doorstep. He was found by Mayo’s mum the day after his birth.
Mayo, now 20, claimed she did not know she was pregnant. She also told the hearing of her difficult family life.
But jurors found her guilty of murder with a majority verdict at Worcester Crown Court. Mayo, of Ruardean in Gloucestershire, was jailed for at least 12 years.
Laura Heath
Laura Heath, Hakeem’s mother, was found guilty of manslaughter and jailed for 20 years
(Image: West Midlands Police)
A mum fatally neglected her seven-year-old son who died from an asthma attack in what a trial judge said was a “needless, tragic and a result of (her) abject failure as his mother.”
Hakeem Hussain was found dead in the garden of a home in Cook Street in Nechells in November 2017. Mum Laura Heath, 42, had smoked heroin before going to bed the night before Hakeem died.
It was thought he woke up in the night short of breath and went outside where he suffered a final exacerbation of his condition, without his inhalers to hand, Coventry Crown Court was told.
Heath mismanaged her son’s asthma throughout 2017 as she prioritised her spiralling addiction to Class A drugs, which she funded through sex work, stealing and borrowing money under false pretences, the trial was told.
She had also disengaged with social services and school staff, who became increasingly concerned for the boy’s welfare. Mr Justice Dove said Hakeem’s death was the result of “catastrophic and deplorable” parenting as her life “entered a drug-fuelled downward spiral into squalor, chaos and tragedy.”
Heath was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter. She had already pleaded guilty to four child cruelty offences, including two counts of “wilfully neglecting her son by failing to provide proper medical supervision in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to health”, and two offences of “wilfully ill-treating Hakeem by exposing him to heroin and crack cocaine.” She was jailed for 20 years.
Carla Scott
Carla Scott
(Image: PA)
A mum was convicted of killing her nine-year-old son after he was found to have 50 injuries to his body. Alfie Steele had been hit with belts, sliders and flip flops as well as subjected to “more sinister forms of punishment.”
It was alleged he was dunked in cold water baths naked and made to stand outside in the middle of the night and have cold water thrown over him.
The youngster died after police were called to his Droitwich home as officers probed a report he had fallen asleep in the bath in February 2021. Alfie’s mum Carla Scott, 37, from Droitwich, was found guilty of manslaughter after being cleared of murder. Her partner Dirk Howell, 43 – also known as ‘Dean’ – from Aston, was convicted of his murder.
Scott was also convicted of child cruelty offences, which Howell had already admitted. Scott was sentenced to a total sentence of 27 years imprisonment for manslaughter and child cruelty with a minimum term of 17 years. Howell received a minimum term of 32 years in jail.