A LITHUANIAN woman who tried to strangle her daughter over fears her children would be "taken into care and abused'' has been spared a prison sentence.
Judge Piers Grant told the woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her daughter, it was "not appropriate to impose a prison sentence'' given her mental health difficulties at the time and sentenced her to three years on probation.
The 38-year-old mother, who lived in Newtownards, Co Down, pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of her then four-year-old daughter and assaulting her husband occasioning him actual bodily harm.
The court was told on Tuesday that on the morning of October 12, 2015, her husband woke to hear one of the children crying. The defendant was standing by the bed and she was saying to her husband 'they have to die'.
"She said that the children would be taken away from them by social services and that if they were taken away they 'would be abused','' the prosecutor told the court.
"She then said to her husband: 'We have to kill them'."
When her husband pushed her away, he was hit on the head with a television.
He was knocked unconscious and when he came around his wife had her hands around the neck of their four-year-old daughter.
Police arrived and the mother was arrested and taken into custody.
The child was taken to the Ulster Hospital and found have red and purple marks to her neck and shoulder.
The defendant's husband required treatment to a bite mark on his arm and three staples to the injury to the back of his head.
The court heard that the defendant later spent three and a half months in the Downshire hospital in Downpatrick, Co Down, where a psychiatrist who examined her noted that at the time of the incident she had suffered a "serious breakdown."
