Ten month old baby survives, mother dies from 8 story fall.

[LSN80]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/14/justice/new-york-baby-mother-fall/index.html

Bystanders were shocked when they saw the 45-year-old mother fall Wednesday afternoon.

"I wish I never witnessed that," Steven Dominguez told CNN affiliate WPIX. "It's disturbing, and horrible. The baby bounced off her chest onto the floor, face down and was crying. My mother tried to pick up the baby, but there was already a detective there."

Details are still sketchy regarding the incident, but neighbors heard loud arguing coming from the apartment in the hours preceding the fall. There were no witnesses to the actual event, the woman jumping, but several people were on the scene immediately. Police have confirmed that the woman did leave a suicide note, seven pages long, with no signs of a struggle. Keston, the ten month old, was taken to the hospital where he is in critical but somehow, stable condition.

How does it come to this? The woman, now identified as Cynthia Wachenheim, was successful, married and a lawyer. It's little less then a miracle that the baby survived, and it's likely a good thing that the mother didn't, harsh as that may sound. The mother attempted to kill herself and her baby. Whatever the circumstances, however poorly life may seem at the time, attempting to take the life of your child along with your own is about the most inhumane thing one could do.

According to neighbor Christian Johnson, the woman was arguing with an unidentified man, believed to be her husband, just hours before the woman committed suicide.

I came home, they were arguing. I actually stopped to listen, and I heard screaming and the baby was crying. He just kept saying, "Why wouldn't you pick up the phone, why would you put that stress on me? Why wouldn't you pick up the phone, why, why?"

I think of all the couples in the world who would kill for a child. I myself am adopted, by parents who really wanted children, but were unable to do so on their own. As the days go on, Im sure more details will emerge as to the "why", but there's no justification or situation in the world that makes this decision ok. There are so many options out there that even if the woman was resigned to die, that should never be a consideration as to the fate of a baby. I'm generally opposed to suicide, but I think this woman would have done the world a favor by jumping alone.

Your thoughts on this? Is anyone as outraged by this as me?

Looking into the human psyche, how does one get to the point where suicide/infanticide becomes a viable option?

I have a morbid curiosity into the details of the woman's suicide note, but something tells me I'll wind up villifying her all the more after reading it.

 

[Sinister Shadows]

Suicide is one of the most selfish things someone can do, but murder/suicide (which this was basically an attempt of) is just.. I don't know. Kill yourself all you want to, just don't harm others that doesn't want the same fate as you. It's almost a shame that she died, it really would have served her right to have had to suffer the injuries from a fall like that since she tried to kill the baby as well.

 

[i'm a cm punk girl]

it Pisses me off that she could've taken her baby's life, and this poor baby had absolutely no say. Call me mean, but obviously she has some very serious delusional thinking it's probably best she didn't survive.

 

[Mustang Sally]

Looking into the human psyche, how does one get to the point where suicide/infanticide becomes a viable option?

Is committing suicide a selfish act? Yes, by it's very nature, it has to be the most selfish thing anyone can do.....it must be a decision made with only the motives of one person involved....the self. Other people might enter into the mind of the person, but in the end, it's the most personal, self-absorbed decision a person can ever make.

Despite the selfishness, I find myself feeling bad in pondering the agony of mind the woman must have suffered to put herself in this position in the first place. It's the same way I felt about Chris Benoit: yes, we hate him, we condemn his actions....all the politically correct things we're supposed to say about what he did to his family. Still, I feel sorrow for the state of mind he must have suffered after the realization of what he had done to his family left him no choice but to do himself in, too. It leaves me weak to think of anyone having to feel that bad inside.

And yes, although we have to hate the mother for trying to take the child into death with her, I wonder if, in her personal agony, she thought of killing her child as the kind thing to do; that her son would suffer having to go through life without a mother. Or maybe it was totally inner-directed; if she couldn't continue to live, her child wasn't going to, either.

No, I'm certainly not defending any of those rationalizations for the woman's actions, but it occurs to me that what goes on in a person's mind that leads them to the point of suicide and/or attempted murder are the warning signs that often lead to these drastic actions. It's hard to believe that the suicide was a spur-of-the-moment thing; there was probably a lot that led up to it. If there's a way to see some of them in advance, lives can be saved......but all people are different, and how we handle situations depends on the personalities of the individual involved.

 

[H33LTurn]

To leave a seven page suicide note shows that this woman's issues probably stemmed far beyond the argument with her supposed husband. I dont like to speak on issue like this without knowing the full story but it doesnt take much to push the human mind beyond its limits. Its easy for any of us to condemn her actions, especially since an innocent child was involved, but if we're truly interested in curving instances like this we first have to make the conscious effort to understand what individuals like this are going through. As the days go on and the investigators dig into the 7 page suicide note I'm sure they'll uncover the pysche of a very troubled woman who received more hatred than help. The silver lining is that the child survived and the husband is still out there, and assuming he's willing to cooperate, we can start to shed some light on what drove this woman to make such a grave decision.

 

[Poop Master Flex]

Your thoughts on this? Is anyone as outraged by this as me?

Being a parent this pisses me off beyond belief. I can't imagine someone trying to kill themselves as well as their kid who isn't even a year old yet. Yeah sometimes shit gets bad, I'm sure there isn't 1 person on this site that hasn't been through some pretty bad shit. I myself have been through flat out nightmares in my life but you brush yourself off and you move on, even when its very difficult to do so.

This is an especially close subject to me because I've had to deal with suicide with people in my life a lot more than once. I can't think of a single thing that would make me even consider killing myself and from all the shit that's happened in my life I'm still happy to be alive. If shit's bad you change it and make it good.

Looking into the human psyche, how does one get to the point where suicide/infanticide becomes a viable option?


Whether its either brain injury or something that's happened to you somehow you have to justify killing yourself and your kid. I can't for the life of me figure out how a person can do such a thing. Whether they have a screw loose, an undeveloped brain or people just not knowing how to deal with problems I don't know. I've been in some dark places before but its never crossed my mind so I don't know. The only thing I can think of something happened to someone that is simply too much and they just can't handle living with whatever that thing is, or they are bat shit crazy.