Russian child protection chief issues babysitter warning after 'nanny' is filmed brandishing girl's head

Russian investigators say the woman is believed to have murdered the child in her care and set fire to her home

A Russian police officer stands at the site where a woman suspected of murdering a young child was detained, near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in Moscow (Reuters)

Russia’s child protection ombudsman has warned any parent considering hiring a babysitter to “check her mental state” after a woman was arrested on suspicion of beheading a little girl in Moscow.

Investigators said the unnamed nanny was charged with murdering a young child in her care before setting fire to the parents’ home. The child was identified as a four year old girl by the Russian interior ministry.

The woman was purportedly shown in amateur footage brandishing the head of the young child and declaiming: “I am your death”, “I am a terrorist”, and, according to a passing reporter from the RBC daily, “Allahu Akbar”.

As the news story developed, the Children's Rights Commissioner for the Kremlin, Pavel Astakhov, called it another “monstrous and inexplicable” case of a young girl murdered “presumably by her nanny”.

“Repeatedly we find that the nanny hired to care for a child has actually beaten and tortured [them],” he posted on his official Twitter profile (in Russian). “Now it has come to murder.”

In another post, he wrote: “Before hiring a nanny for your child, at least make sure of her mental state! After all, you are trusting her with the most valuable thing – a child’s life.”

In its statement following Monday’s incident, Moscow’s Investigative Committee said the suspect had been placed in psychiatric care to determine whether she was capable of understanding her actions.

RBC’s Polina Nikolskaya told Reuters: "I was on my way to the metro station from home.

“She was standing near the metro entrance and caught my attention because she was screaming Allahu Akbar. I saw that she had a bloodied head in her arms, but I thought it was not real. People in the crowd said it was real.”

Others described how the woman was allowed to walk up and down outside the metro station for around 20 minutes, brandishing the head, before she was tackled by a police officer.