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International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics Thursday, 28.03.2024, 19:55

Mother found dead in Dobele was pregnant

BC, Riga, 05.01.2017.Print version
The woman found dead in an apartment in Dobele with her husband earlier this week was pregnant, State Police Dobele Precinct Chief Aigars Bite told LETA.

Her pregnancy was confirmed by a post-mortem as well as by her mother, however, Bite could not say how many months the woman was pregnant. Local social services inform that they had no information that the women was pregnant.

Bite said that the women and her husband have had no previous run-ins with the law in connection with drug use. The husband has had previous convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol and minor theft, and that social workers have never encountered him under the influence.


Drug paraphernalia was not found in the apartment itself, however, needles and a ''brown colored substance'' were found in the common area of the residential building. Furthermore, no alcohol was found inside the apartment, or empty alcohol containers.


He added that it is hard to tell why the children themselves were starving when they were found, as there was a substantial amount of food in the apartment - sausages, margarine, cookies, potatoes, onions etc.


The post-mortem will determine the cause of the deaths, Bite said. He added that as soon as the children recover from their ordeal and they are in good health, they too will be questioned about the circumstances of the tragedy.


As reported, a baby starved to death and three older siblings were left unattended in a social house apartment in the central Latvian town of Dobele after their parents died, apparently of drug overdose, police informed yesterday.


State Police chief Ints Kuzis and Zemgale regional police chief Andris Zellis said at the news conference that the shocking deaths were discovered when the dead woman’s mother sought police assistance after failing to contact her daughter by phone. The woman's mother had been away from home for about two weeks.


Upon arriving at the scene, officers heard children’s cries coming from the apartment’s open window. They called firefighters who climbed into the apartment through the window.


The scene they found in the apartment was horrifying, Kuzis said. The police officers found the bodies of a 50 years-old man and a 23 years-old woman in the apartment, and a dead nine-months-old baby was found under a bed. It was established that the child had died of starvation.


There were also three other children, aged three, four and five, in the apartment. They were weakened from starvation. A custody court is now expected to decide as to who will be raising the orphaned kids.


The woman was last seen alive on December 27. It is presumed that she and her husband died on that day. The time of the baby's death will be established in a post mortem.


Since no signs were found suggesting of violence, drug overdose is now considered the most likely cause of the couple’s death.






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