San Antonio police said a 3 1/2-week-old boy was stabbed in the upper body, mutilated and decapitated Sunday morning.
The baby's 33-year-old mother told police that the devil made her kill Scott Wesley Buchholtz Sanchez, who was born June 30, the San Antonio Express-News reported. She said she was "hearing voices," according to police.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said Otty Sanchez apparently ate the baby's brain and some other body parts. She decapitated the infant, tore off his face and chewed off three of his toes before stabbing herself in the torso and slicing her own throat.
"It's too heinous for me to describe it any further," McManus said.
Police said they were called to the home at about 5 a.m. and found the baby dead in a bedroom.
Officer Joe Rios said during a news conference Sunday that "the baby had obviously been decapitated."
Rios said Sanchez used a steak knife to repeatedly stab the baby, the Express-News reported. She then decapitated, skinned and gutted the infant.
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McManus said the crime scene was so grisly that police officers barely spoke to each other while searching the house. Parts of the baby were missing, including pieces Sanchez allegedly ate.
"At this particular scene, you could have heard a pin drop," he said. "No one was speaking. It was about as somber as it could have been."
Sanchez is charged with capital murder and is being held on $1 million bail. She is recovering from her wounds at a local hospital.
Rios said a kitchen knife and two swords were recovered from the home.
Police said the attack occurred a week after the child's father moved out.
Otty Sanchez's aunt, Gloria Sanchez, said her niece had been "in and out" of a psychiatric ward, and that the hospital called several months ago looking to check up on her. She did not elaborate on the nature of her niece's health problems to the Associated Press.
"Otty didn't mean to do that. She was not in her right mind," she said by phone to the AP.
She said her family was devastated.
Otty Sanchez's mother called police after she saw her daughter sitting with the baby's body, according to the News-Express.
Sanchez lives with her sister and her sister's two children, ages 5 and 7, and her mother lives in another home behind the house.
Social service workers picked up the children of Sanchez's sister, who were home at the time of the incident but were not harmed.
Authorities said they were looking into Sanchez's mental health history. Investigators said she had no criminal history related to mental illness, according to the News-Express.
Lita Beck contributed to this report.
