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Endris Mohammed murder trial: Father 'snapped' under financial pressure before killing children, court hears

A father who killed his two children had simply ‘snapped’ under financial pressures and had not been suffering any psychotic symptoms, a murder trial heard.

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Endris Mohammed

Endris Mohammed denied hearing voices or holding any delusional beliefs before smothering his children with a petrol-soaked rag and setting blaze to the family home in Great Barr, as his wife slept.

He told consultant psychiatrist Rowena Jones: “I think just all the frustrations exploded in my mind. I wanted it to be the end of me. I didn’t want to suffer anymore.”

However he claimed to have believed he was being stalked and that there was a conspiracy to isolate him from his friends. He also alleged to have thought his eldest son was a famous footballer in Ethiopia. But medics considered the claims to be simply ‘wishful thinking’, Birmingham Crown Court heard.

Mohammed’s son Saros, aged eight, and six-year-old daughter Leanor were carried from the fume-filled house in Holland Road, Hamstead, by their mother, who had been roused by the smoke alarm, and a neighbour.

Uber driver Mohammed, 47, admits causing the deaths of his children in October 2016 but denies murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He also denies attempting to murder his wife.

Ms Jones told the court that Mohammed told he was under pressure from money problems, lack of work and from his partner. He had been renting a car to work as a taxi driver but found he was spending more money than he earned.

She said he denied experiencing hallucinations or being under any external control and that the idea to kill himself and his family came to him on the day of the fire. Psychiatric nurse Tracey Whinnery, of the Reaside Clinic, Birmingham, said Mohammed spoke of acting impulsively ‘out of sheer desperation, and feelings of hopelessness and unworthiness’.

After deciding to commit suicide, he also resolved to kill the children because ‘they were going to be the same, like me’. She concluded that he displayed no evidence of paranoia, bizarre behaviour, unusual beliefs or any other psychotic symptoms. The court heard that Mohammed had come to the UK from Ethiopia in 2006 seeking asylum but did not become eligible until 2010, and so could not legally work in the meantime.

Mohammed was later found next to his burned-out taxi in Newcastle-under-Lyme, having failed to take his own life. The case continues