Soldier claims girlfriend ordered him to cut 6-month-old baby's throat

The 22-year-old Rotterdam man who killed his 6-month-old daughter in July said the child’s mother and her brother ordered him to do it. “It is the most terrible thing I have ever done, but they forced me,” he told the military court in Arnhem on Thursday.

What exactly Ruud S. meant by that did not become clear at the first hearing. His lawyer also wouldn’t say whether her client heard voices or whether he still believes that his girlfriend and her brother literally told him to kill his baby. “It is now up to the psychologist and the psychiatrist to investigate exactly how he experienced this.”

On Sunday, July 17, Ruud S. was at his girlfriend’s apartment on Wolphaertsbocht in Rotterdam-Charlois. His girlfriend, their daughter Emily, the girl’s uncle, and her grandmother were also there. At one point, S. took the child into another room and cut her throat.

The mother and grandmother grabbed Emily and fled with her onto the street, screaming for help. A neighbor drove them to the hospital, where healthcare workers found that the baby had died.

The father also went onto the street. When bystanders asked whether he had killed his own child, he said yes. The police arrested him.

Since his act, R. has been imprisoned in Vught, where a psychologist and psychiatrist will soon examine him. At the time of the drama, he was at home on sick leave with burnout and, according to his mother, had been confused for a while.

R. is on trial before the military chamber of the Arnhem court because the army employs him as an IT specialist. The next hearing is on January 16. The investigation report into the suspect’s mental health state will likely not be ready by then. The prosecutor expects the substantive criminal trial will begin in April.