THE Lusaka lawyer who survived a suicide attempt after allegedly administering a poisonous substance which killed her son, aged two, told her older sister that the child drowned in a bathtub.
A Judge heard yesterday that Namwene Phiri told her sister Esther Phiri that after her son drowned, she felt she had nothing to live for and decided to end her life too.
Esther, 41, a Information Technology specialist, narrated that her sister told her that she tried to pray for her dead son hoping he would wakeup but to no avail.
“She told me that the baby drowned in the bathtub and when she noticed that, she got the child and tried to resuscitate him.
“She tried to pray for him to come back to life but it didn’t happen. So, she decided to take doom which she had mixed with some domestos so she could end her life.
“She felt she had no purpose to continue living because the son she was living for was dead,” Esther testified in the case her sister is charged with murder which happened on February 15,2022.
The witness also spoke about the purported suicide note which police found at the crime scene, Namwene’s house.
“My sister told me that she had written the letter on the 14th[of February] and that she would do this when she was depressed.
“She would write things. She wrote the letter when she was feeling depressed but did not go through with it,” Esther said.
She also gave a history of how Namwene grew up a traumatized child because of physical and mental abuse at the hands of their aunty.
“She was abused mentally, verbally, physically by my late aunty who was married to my later mother’s younger brother. Our parents died when we were very young. Our father died when the accused was a year old. Our mother died when my sister was three years old.
So, we were taken up by mother’s brother who was then chosen as administrator,” Esther said.
“When she[Namwene] was 12 years old, she ran away from home to live on the streets in 2003.
“I recall i was a student studying at Evelyn Hone College when my uncle came to inform me that my sister had run away from home. They had been looking for her but couldn’t find her,” she testified said before breaking down.
She also told the court that towards the end of 2004, Namwene, who once checked in at YWCA seeking refuge shelter to avoid the physical abuse from home, attempted suicide by consuming a panado overdose.
The court also heard that the accused once atte
She further narrated that Namwene eventually completed school at Chipembi Girls Boarding School and enrolled to study law at the University of Zambia.
But during this period, Esther noticed that her younger sister was battling depression and anger issues.
“She would suffer from depression and she was also seeking therapy and she was also a patient at Psych Health Zambia,” she said.
Esther also narrated Namwene, whom a psychiatrist diagnosed with a personality disorder before trial, was a loving parent to her late son, Ayden.
“She was a loving and caring mother and i was amazed how she took care of him single handedly. She was a very good mother to Ayden,” Esther said.
Namwene’s high-school and university mate Auxilia Lifalalo also testified and told the judge how her colleague had a temper.
“We went to UNZA together. We did have a few of our moments, arguments, her temper was quite on a different level. It was high,” Ms Lifalalo said.
Judgement will be passed in July.
(Mwebantu)