According to Arab news reports, Tameem Akram Hamadah, 29, was carrying his 1-year-old nephew on his shoulders in a crowded supermarket in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Sunday when he began arguing with his sister. The incident suddenly escalated when, without warning, Hamadah allegedly put his nephew on the ground, placed his foot on the child's chest and decapitated him in full view of the child's mother and numerous patrons of the store.
"I was shopping when I heard a scream and saw people running toward the shop's pastry corner," Ahmed Abdul-Rahman, a shopper at the Al-Marhaba supermarket, told the Saudi Gazette. "When I arrived there, I couldn't believe what I saw. A headless body of a child lay on the floor and the head was lying nearby, soaked in blood."
The child's traumatized mother and at least one shopper fainted as a result of witnessing the horrific incident. The mother was transported to a nearby hospital, where she remains at the time of this writing.
"The murderer was in a dispute with the boy’s mother and her husband," an unidentified police officer said in an interview with Arabnews.com. "He chopped off the boy’s head in front of the mother to get back at her."
According to Allheadlinenews.com, Hamadah killed his nephew because he was upset that his estranged brother-in-law had been threatening to take the boy away from his sister.
When police arrived at the scene, they discovered that the child's head had been almost completely severed from his body. The murder weapon, a large knife, lay nearby. Hamadah had allegedly grabbed it from a rack in the Home Appliances aisle. A police forensic team secured the crime scene, and the store remained closed for nearly four hours while investigators collected evidence and interviewed witnesses.
"There were plenty of witnesses, the facts of the case are clear, the evidence is abundant," Christoph Wilcke, an expert on Saudi law, told ABCnews.com.
Hamadah has allegedly confessed to the child's murder, reportedly telling police he wanted to save his nephew from suffering the effects of his parents’ escalating marital problems.
According to Javno.com, murder is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, and perpetrators are generally beheaded. Apparently, "an eye for an eye" might be an all too literal description of this appalling case.
