Farhiyo Abdullahi Charged With Attempting To Kill Her 5 Kids Along With Herself
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A Rochester mother is charged with attempting to kill her five children as well as herself, according to court documents.
The complaint says that Rochester Police officers were sent to an apartment on the 200 block of 1st Street Northeast the evening of October 2 on a welfare check.
Investigators say that they took five children into protective custody. They told officers that the day before the welfare check, they had been locked in a car and that their mother, 32-year-old Farhiyo Abdullahi, had run a tube from the exhaust pipe of the vehicle into the vehicle itself.
The children told investigators that Abdullahi had kept the vehicle running and told them to breath in and out.
One of her kids, an 11-year-old boy, said he began feeling sick and couldn't hold in vomit. He said that his mother then punched him in the head twice before all of them ran from the vehicle and into the back door of their apartment.
The children were evaluated for potential carbon monoxide poisoning.
Police interviewed the children's father, who said that Abdullahi had called him that day, seeming "out of it" and saying strange things, and saying she could not take care of the kids by herself anymore, and that he had to come get them or else he would "regret it."
The criminal complaint says that Abdullahi admitted that she had tried to kill herself along with her children, but it "didn't work out."
She faces 10 felony counts -- five each on first-degree attempted murder, and five each on endangering a child where the situation could result in harm or death.
She appeared in court Friday morning, where bail was set at $1 million.
