GIANT rats have eaten a three-month old baby girl alive after her mother left her home alone to go partying. The 26-year-old woman – who has been arrested for child neglect – returned to her ‘shack’ in Johannesburg at dawn to find the remains of her daughter in her blood soaked bed.
The mother reportedly took the tot’s twin brother, named Lucky, with her on the night out and the boy is now in the custody of his father.
A neighbour was alerted by the screams at dawn and rushed inside the home to find the bloody scene.
The neighbour said: “The baby could only have died a painful death. The infant’s tongue, eyes and fingers had all been eaten.
“Besides the missing body parts, the remains of her body had bites and wounds all over that were inflicted by the sharp teeth of the rats.
“This woman must rot in jail. She does not serve to be a mother.”
The disturbing incident happened in a township area of Katlehong in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the weekend.
Angry locals who gathered after the police took the mother away said she had been drinking all night at a local bar.
Noluthando Mtshali, the daughter of the landlady who rented out the shack to the mother, revealed the baby twins had been taken to hospital last week.
She said: “The only thing this woman likes is going out partying.
“I just could not bring myself to go in and see what happened to this poor child.
“She has been a tenant since the beginning of the year and her twins were both in hospital last week but we do not know why they had been taken to hospital.”
Noluthando described hearing the mother returning home to find her dead child.
She said: “She came back in the early hours of the morning with a new boyfriend and they tried to break into the shack since she had lost the key and they found the baby girl dead.
“They were claiming that the child was burnt.”
The landlady, Mama Sesi Mtshali, said the mother came running out of the shack at about 6.30am local time screaming after discovering her baby.
She said: “We have lots of rats in the area. She leaves the children alone all night long and they cry themselves to sleep.
“She would not say she left the baby alone.”
After the woman’s arrest, the father of the twins, aged 28, came to fetch the surviving boy who is now in the care of his new girlfriend.
He said: “My ex-girlfriend gave birth to twins a boy and a girl and on Friday she took the boy and left the girl in the shack.
“When she came back the following morning at about 6.30am the baby girl was dead”.
The new girlfriend of the grieving father said she had witnessed the neglectful mother’s love of partying.
She said: “The mother always comes here drunk and locks the infants inside alone.
“When Lucky came to us he looked like he had not eaten for days but he is fine now” Katlehong police spokesperson Capt Mega Ndobe confirmed the arrest of the woman.
She said: “I can confirm the little girl died after being eaten by rats.
“The mother has been arrested and is facing charges of child negligence and the case will be heard in court next year”.
In 2011, two baby girls were killed and eaten in separate attacks in squalid South African townships. Lunathi Dwadwa, 3, was killed in a shack outside Cape Town as she slept on the floor beside her parents.
Another infant was eaten alive in a shack in Soweto while her mum was out with friends. The month before grandmother Nomathemba Joyi, 77, died when giant rats chewed off her face as she slept.
The Sun
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