Shocking Video Shows UK Woman Choking One-Year-Old Baby, Saying ‘It’d Rather Be Dead!’

Police in London are still on the lookout for an unidentified woman Tuesday following the release of a closed circuit camera video that shows the woman choking the baby of a stranger as the baby’s mother looks in horror.

The assault occurred in a Boots store on The Strand in Westminster last month, according to a report from The Independent. At around 12:30 on Friday, January 16, a woman wearing a poncho strolls into the store and makes straight for the stroller with a one-year-old boy in it.

While the mother has her back turned, the woman in the poncho reaches into the baby’s stroller. The mother appears to think at first that the woman in the poncho is simply playing with the child, but the video shows her coming to the horrid realization that something is wrong. She grabs the offending woman’s hand and pushes her away.

Reportedly, the woman in the poncho had taken hold of the baby’s throat and begun choking the child. Perhaps not even aware of the severity of the incident, a Boots security guard simply ushers the woman out of the store as the child’s mother looks on, shocked.

When the security guard approached, witnesses tell The London Evening Standard, the woman said “something like ‘that baby doesn’t deserve to be alive.'”

Police report that the woman said, “That baby would rather be dead!” Shortly afterward, she was escorted out of the store, and she was reportedly last seen walking off toward Trafalgar Square.

Child abuse of the sort seen in this video, wherein a stranger seemingly randomly assaults a helpless one-year-old, is rarely seen. More regularly, abuse tends to be between family members, as is the case with a Florida couple booked on felony child abuse charges after confining their daughter to a makeshift cage. Yet another case saw a Virginia mother brought up on child abuse charges for hanging her 14-month-old toddler from his shirt on a planter hook. That young mother eventually turned herself in to authorities after images she posted of the crying, suspended child went viral on social media.

Even though the incident occurred a month ago, Metropolitan Police are still on the lookout for the woman. She is said to be “a white woman in her early 60s, slightly over five feet tall,” with light-colored hair. Reportedly, she has “a boil or eye deformity” on her face, and she may well still be wearing the same red and grey-striped poncho top, as well as the deer stalker hat she is seen wearing in the video. Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call 101 or contact Crimestoppers at 0800.555.1111.

[Image via YouTube]