Russian-American Mother Strangles Son Over War Fears: Police

WISCONSIN — The woman arrested after the death of an 8-year-old boy in Sheboygan Falls faces criminal charges, the Sheboygan County District Attorney's Office announced Tuesday.

Natalia Hitchcock was charged with first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide on Monday, a criminal complaint showed. Hitchcock is accused of attacking and killing her son Oliver, who police said died on Friday after being hospitalized.

Hitchcock told detectives that she had only slept eight hours for five days before she was arrested, and she was experiencing "brain fog," the complaint said. An emergency room nurse told police the woman had a dangerous amount of Tylenol in her system.

When police responded to the attack at the family's apartment on Wednesday, Hitchcock's husband told officers that she had been watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine on TV and was drinking vodka recently, the complaint said. Hitchcock had lived in Russia and told detectives she thought people were looking at her strange.

Officers found the 8-year-old boy unresponsive on his back on the living room floor and tried to give him CPR, the complaint said. One officer found bruises on the boy's neck as a sign of strangulation.

Police found a knife wound on Hitchcock's chest when they responded, the complaint said. The woman's husband told police that he had wrestled two knives from her. "She tried to stab me," he added.

The boy's mother told police that she had suffocated him, because she "did not want him to be abused," according to the complaint. She also told detectives that she suspected her husband of trying to sell her and the kids on the "dark web."

A detective reported that Hitchcock had pushed the boy's 11-year-old brother under the water in a bathtub on March 29, the complaint said. The 11-year-old said that if the water was higher, he probably would have drowned.

The woman's husband told police that she had "surges of rage" recently but no recent history of mental health problems. The two had been married for 15 years.

Oliver Hitchcock was hospitalized on Wednesday and died Friday, Sheboygan Falls police chief Eric Miller said in a press conference. Paramedics first treated the boy for strangulation.

"We hope that justice is fair and swift, but most importantly we hope that our family can find a way to heal from this unbelievable tragedy," Eric Hitchcock, the boy's uncle, said in a fundraiser page. "We are broken and our grief is profound."

A fundraiser has been set up for Oliver's father, Jeff, and his 11-year-old brother, Leo. So far, $26,835 has been raised.