By Jill Fraser
MELBOURNE
The mother of seven of the eight children found dead in a house in northern Australia was charged with eight murders Sunday as relatives mourned the devastating loss, local media reported.
Mersane Warria, 37, was charged at a bedside hearing in the hospital where she is being treated for knife wounds, the Brisbane Times said.
She is accused of killing seven of her nine children on Thursday night or Friday morning, as well as a niece.
A hearing will be held at Cairns Magistrates’ Court Monday but Warria, also known as Raina Thaiday, will not appear.
“She is currently under police guard and will remain so until a decision’s made about any future accommodations,’’ Detective Inspector Bruno Asnicar, of Cairns police, said, quoted in the Courier Mail.
Relatives and neighbors of the slain children walked to the house in Murray Street, in the western Cairns suburb of Manoora, Sunday morning.
Around 100 members of the Torres Strait community walked to a park next to No. 34.
Many were crying and wailing as they gave full flood to their grief. One man, thought to be the father of the youngest victims, cried out: "My babies, my babies."
ABC News reported that the five fathers of the children attended. Reporter Allyson Horn said some mourners “had to be carried because they were so overcome with grief, they couldn't walk.”
She added: "We saw several people, including one man who was the father of some of these children, break down uncontrollably in tears and sit in front of this floral tribute that has been set up in the park next to where this tragedy happened.”
In a nearby community center, a memorial service was organized where prayers were offered and hymns sung.
Church services across the city paid tribute to the children Sunday morning.
In one of Australia’s worst mass killings, the bodies of four girls and four boys aged between two and 14 were found at 11.20 Friday (02.20 GMT), reportedly by the 20-year-old brother of seven of the children.
Australian media reported that neighbors heard screams of a woman begging for forgiveness at around 21.00 Thursday evening.
The neighbors said they heard the woman yelling in a mix of English and Torres Strait Creole: “Don’t let them take them away from us. God bless us. Forgive me for what I’ll do.”
Torres Strait Islanders are a Melanesian people indigenous to the islands off the northern coast of Queensland.
News Limited reported police called to the property were confronted with a scene so horrifying their “screams and shouts” for an ambulance could be heard from the street.
Police have not named the children and have urged media not to identify them.
Asnicar confirmed that forensic experts had seized a number of knives, ABC News reported, and detectives are believed to be considering the possibility that Warria was under the influence of methamphetamine, a drug known as ‘ice,’ at the time of the deaths.
An uncle to the children, who had seen them Wednesday, told Daily Mail Australia that Warria had recently found God and was changing her life. He described her as “a great mother.”
Neighbors told News Limited that “all seemed normal” around the house just days earlier, with the children playing in “a blow-up pool under the hose” and Waria tending the garden.
www.aa.com.tr/en
