Mom Leaps into Oncoming Train with Kids
Liz Brunson continues to send me links that straddle the line between “parent behaving (very) badly” and “parent with a chemical imbalance”. What else to think about a woman like Navjeet Sidhu, who thought her life so unworth living that she flung herself and her kids, 5 year old Simran and 23 month old Aman, into the path of a train at London’s Southall station? (In a saddening twist, Navjeet was also four months pregnant.)
One problem is that we feel for the loved ones left behind. We want to be sensitive to their grief. But beyond that, most of us can’t accept that someone would do this if they were “in their right mind”. It’s not that we want to believe the best, but that we refuse to believe the worst. “If she really had a choice,” we cry, “she wouldn’t have committed such a heinous crime.”
I tend to be of an opposite mind. In the absence of a several neurological problem, I can’t believe that Sidhu had “no choice”. There were countless opportunities for her to witness the insanity of her plan and to turn back before it was too late. Instead, she killed herself, and took the lives of two who had hardly begun to live along with her. If it was in Navjeet Sidhu’s power to cause this tragedy, then it was in her power to prevent it.
Tags: london, mother, murder, parents, parents+behaving+badlyRelated Stories
POSTED IN: murder
4 opinions for Mom Leaps into Oncoming Train with Kids
Liz
Sep 8, 2005 at 5:02 pm
You’re right, I am quick to believe that people must be mentally ill when they do something that is so out of my realm of possibility. I cannot imagine jumping in front of a train, let alone with two small children. I guess it is my coping mechanism that I have used with Susan Smith, Andrea Yates and all the other horrible stories that have occurred in my almost 16 years of being a mother. We’re still waiting on the trial of a local mother of three small children who sent her car into the lake with the kids (who drowned) so she could be with her boyfriend. How can anyone in their right mind do this?
achromic
Sep 9, 2005 at 8:19 am
I donno Liz. I mean I don’t even have kids and it is unfathomable to me. I do however have family members that are indeed mentally ill, and I have been involed in the mentally ill communty. What I will say, is that many mentally ill people do have a choice, many know they are not right that there is something wrong and that they are dangerous long before they do something. There is a small few, which the mental illness comes over very fast and complete and they are irrational and unable to seek help. What is keeping many people from seeking the help that they need is the fear of the stigma attached to many types of disorders. I won’t say that some of that stigma is not well founded…. some of it is…. but it is quiet easy to see how if you are having problems with reality then being able to what is “best” might be a bit confusing. Not that I think it matters, once you kill someone I don’t really care if you are mentally ill or not.
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