Rosdeep Adekoya, the mother of three-year-old Mikaeel Kular, has admitted killing her son and hiding his body in a suitcase. Adekoya had originally been charged with murder but admitted the reduced charge of culpable homicide when she appeared at Edinburgh’s High Court yesterday. She will be sentenced next month.
Advocate depute Alex Prentice said: “The basis for the plea tendered being accepted is that the Crown accepts that the accused had no intention to kill Mikaeel and that the assault perpetrated upon him, although severe, fell short of the wicked recklessness required for murder.”
However there is some anger that the Crown agreed to the reduced charges. One neighbour, who was involved in the two-day search for the little boy and was present at the High Court, said the decision was ‘a disgrace. This was murder’.
Mikaeel died two days after being beaten by Rosdeep Adekoya at the family’s flat in Muirhouse in January. She put his body in a suitcase, which she then dumped behind her sister’s house in Kirkcaldy. Ms Adekoya told police that Mikaeel had disappeared from the family home, sparking a massive major two-day search.
Adekoya also admitted attempting to defeat the ends of justice by pretending to police that Mikaeel had gone missing.
She pleaded guilty to repeatedly punching her son and causing his body to hit against a hard object or inflicting blunt injuries on his head and body between 12 and 15 January at their home in Ferry Gait Crescent.
She also admitted wrapping Mikaeel’s body in a duvet cover, putting it in a suitcase and driving to Dunvegan Avenue in Kirkcaldy, Fife, where she hid the case under a bush in woods behind a house.
She had called 999 to report her son missing to police, telling officers he got out of bed and climbed on a stool to unlock the front door of his home.
She admitted causing a major search for her son, involving police, the fire service, coastguard, mountain rescue crews and members of the public.
The court heard harrowing details of how Mikaeel died on the night of Tuesday 14 January from injuries inflicted the previous Sunday. Ms Adekoya then took Mikaeel’s twin sister to nursery at Flora Stevenson’s School before driving over to Fife with the three year old boy’s body in the boot of the car.
The court heard that Adekoya later broke down during a police interview and told officers: “It was an accident and I panicked. I am going to go to the jail.” She subsequently then took police to her son’s body in the woods, where it was found in a suitcase covered with branches.
The cause of death was found to be “blunt force abdominal trauma” – Mikaeel had more than 40 separate injuries to his body.
Sentence was deferred until 25 August.
