2 Children Killed, Nanny Arrested

2 Children Fatally Stabbed on Upper West Side - A mother returned home from work to her luxury Upper West Side apartment on Thursday to find two of her children, both under age 7, fatally stabbed in a bathtub by the family’s nanny, the authorities said. The nanny herself lay nearby, grasping a bloody knife, with an apparently self-inflicted slash to her own throat. The mother arrived at the apartment a block from Central Park at 57 West 75th Street around 5:30 p.m. with a third child, the authorities said, and confronted the horrific scene. “There were bloodcurdling screams from a woman and man’s screaming,” said Rima Starr, who lives down the hall from the victims’ second-floor apartment. Ms. Starr recognized the man’s voice as the building superintendent. She heard him yelling: “ ‘You slit her throat! You slit her throat!’ The mother’s was just bloodcurdling screams.”

The nanny, whose name was not released, was arrested as soon as the police arrived, according to law enforcement officials. She was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where she was in serious condition and not expected to live. The police and emergency service personnel shut down the block. Neighbors watched as the victims were removed and rushed to the hospital. Ms. Starr said she was interviewed by the police and told it was the nanny who had stabbed the children. Ms. Starr said that the children’s mother was in a state of shock. “She was screaming in a psychotic state,” she said. “She was not lucid.” She wailed that she would never see her child again, Ms. Starr said. “Just screaming and swaying,” she recalled. “Then she had a lucid moment and said, ‘I need a doctor.’ ” Ms. Starr could only imagine her pain. “She sat there for the longest time in the lobby as the police questioned her.” Ms. Starr said she did not know her neighbor well, but described a young, loving couple. The husband is a businessman, she said, and the wife is a doctor. They have a big, friendly greyhound named Babar, she said. She had seen the nanny in the building, she said, but never got the sense of anything being out of the ordinary. “I rode in the elevator with the nanny just the day before yesterday,” she said. “I was making small talk. She was sort of unfriendly, didn’t want to interact. But I didn’t notice anything strange or weird.”
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