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SINGAPORE: The mother of a four-year-old girl who died of internal bleeding due to blunt force trauma to her abdomen testified in a murder trial against her husband on Wednesday (February 3), saying she looked pale and said her stomach wounded before he died.
The little girl made a fist and showed it to her mother, but said it was not her stepfather who hit her. “I don’t know why (my daughter) collapsed and died,” the girl’s mother said in a statement to police filed in court Wednesday.
Syabilla Syamien Riyadi, 24, took the prosecution witness stand in the trial against Muhammad Salihin Ismail, 28, whom he married in August 2016. Salihin is accused of killing his stepdaughter through two incidents of assault on September 1, 2018, where he hit her multiple times in the abdomen and kicked her stomach hard.
LEE: Man on trial for beating his 4-year-old stepdaughter to death for not learning to use the bathroom
Syabilla was escorted to court from prison, where she has been in custody since October 30, 2020. She faces pending charges for leaving her home to carry out loan shaking in June 2020, methamphetamine use around 16 June 2020 and October 28. 2020, as well as possession of methamphetamine.
She exchanged glances with her husband briefly before giving her testimony. When questioned by Deputy District Attorney Senthilkumaran Sabapathy and defense attorney Syazana Yahya, Syabilla described how her daughter was a cheerful girl who liked to help with housework and was mischievous, who enjoyed running around the house.
He often played with his twin brothers, who were about two years old at the time of the offense. He explained that he had been trying to teach the victim to use the bathroom, but was unsuccessful.
THE EVENTS OF THAT DAY
Sometime in the afternoon of September 1, 2018, Salihin texted him and complained that the victim had urinated on the ground. In a message that Salihin sent him, he said: “Nonsense, lah this (victim’s name). I already said that if she wants, tell her … but she just peed, jinx lah.”
This was not the first time the victim urinated on the floor, Syabilla said. However, he claimed that Salihin was “fine” when the victim urinated on the floor, but that he would be angry if he did so outside the bathroom.
On the way home that day, Syabilla said they had a falling out over text messages about her late return home. According to the prosecution, Salihin had hit the victim in the stomach several times with his fist while Syabilla was out to work, after she urinated on the floor outside the bathroom.
He reportedly pushed her when she urinated on the floor in front of the toilet bowl later that day, before kicking her hard in the stomach. When the girl started crying, Salihin allegedly picked her up and placed her on the toilet bowl, where he punched her in the stomach several times with his fist.
That night, when Syabilla got home, she saw that her daughter was “quite pale” and was “sweating a bit,” she told the court.
After the girl ate her third bite of chicken rice for dinner that night, she told Syabilla that her stomach hurt.
AWAKENED BY DAUGHTER CALLING
Early the next morning, Syabilla said her daughter woke her up by calling Salihin, telling him that she wanted to vomit and that her stomach hurt. When Syabilla asked what had happened, the girl said that the twins sat on their stomachs and showed her a clenched fist.
Syabilla understood that she had been punched and asked if Salihin had hit her, but the girl said no, Syabilla testified.
That was the last time he saw his daughter alive, he said. Salihin took the girl to the bathroom and then came out with her unconscious body. He told Syabilla that the girl was no longer breathing and asked him to call an ambulance.
While waiting for him, Salihin performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the victim, pressing down on his stomach, Syabilla said. When she didn’t respond, Salihin slapped her to wake her up, he added.
The defense questioned two paramedics on the stand a day earlier and confirmed that it could be dangerous for an adult to perform CPR on a child.
At some point, Syabilla asked her husband what had happened to the victim. He gave him a story that was not elaborated in court, and Syabilla said he did not inquire further because he was afraid of him.
When asked why, he said, “Because he will get defensive if I ask him more questions.”
The victim was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead at 10:12 am on September 2, 2018. He died of blood within the peritoneal cavity due to blunt trauma to the abdomen. The trauma pathology was consistent with the imposition of “non-accidental injuries to a young child,” the court heard.
Salihin was arrested after the first police investigations. He admitted in a police statement that he intentionally inflicted blunt injuries on the victim by striking his abdomen several times and kicking his stomach with force.
He added that he had intentionally targeted his stomach because he wanted to “teach him a lesson” for “having so much trouble urinating or moving.”
SYABILLA ON HER TWIN CHILDREN
Syabilla told the court that her twin sons, who weighed about 15 kg each, liked to sit on their stomachs when pregnant with their fourth child. They often bounced off him, and she had seen her children sit on the victim’s stomach during their rough play.
This happened once in the week before the girl’s death, and again in the previous six months, he testified. On the first occasion, the twins stopped bouncing off the victim’s stomach when their mother yelled at them, while on the second, they stopped when the victim screamed.
Syabilla said she didn’t feel the need to take the girl to the doctor on these occasions as she didn’t say anything, “so I thought she was fine.”
“After those two times, did he complain to you?” asked the prosecutor.
“She made a complaint but I ignored her,” Syabilla replied.
The girl also suffered bruises from playing with her siblings, such as when they knocked on a door and bruised her head the week before her death.
When questioned by the defense attorney, Syabilla said her children played “very hard” and sometimes hurt each other.
Salihin’s stepmother took the stand briefly and said that Salihin treated the victim the same way she treated the twins, who were her biological children. He added that he treated the victim “like his own daughter.”
The trial resumes on Thursday. If convicted of murder, Salihin could face death or life imprisonment and flogging.
