London Daily Mail

By JOHN CLARKE

Ali-Mohamed Mohamud was convicted Thursday of second-degree murder for beating to death his 10-year-old stepson.

Homicide detectives and prosecutors in Buffalo, New York, said the case was one of the worst they had ever seen.

After duct-taping a sock in the boy’s mouth and binding his hands with electrical cord, the stepfather savagely beat the boy so bad he separated the his head from the spinal cord, crushing the back of his head and exposing his brain, according to court testimony.


Abdifatah Mohamud, ten, called 911 several times to report abuse at the hands of his stepfather Ali Mohamed Mohamud, who is now accused of beating him to death.


'Justice has been done,' prosecutor Thomas M. Finnerty said after the verdict, reached after three hours of jury deliberations.

Mohamud could face 25 years to life in prison when sentenced November 15, reports the The Buffalo News.

The death could have been avoided after it was revealed the boy called 911 twice in the past year to report abuse.

Abdifatah Mohamud, from Buffalo, New York, was found beaten to death in his family's basement last week. He was bound, gagged and struck repeatedly with a rolling pin.

Though the Buffalo Police Department is investigating how officers handled the calls, they did confirm they reported the allegations to Erie County Child Protective Services - who are accused of not doing enough to help the boy or remove him from the home.

They are refusing to comment on the case.

A police department spokesman says the police commissioner ordered the investigation into 911 calls made in April 2011, when Abdifatah told authorities his stepfather Ali-Mohamad Mohamud was abusing him.

Officers responding to a missing child report last week found the boy's body. The 40-year-old security guard has pleaded not guilty to a second-degree murder charge.

The Buffalo News said that the officers who responded to the 911 calls immediately reported the allegations to Erie County Child Protective Services and made a domestic incident report, which they also passed on to CPS.

The agency failed to remove Abdifatah from the home after this report.

Peter Anderson, spokesman for Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz, told the Buffalo News that confidentiality laws prevent him from commenting on any response by the county's Child Protective Services Division regarding Abdifatah.

He said: 'Personally speaking, I have children of my own, and as a father, this tears at my heart. However, because of state law, we can't comment on this case.'


Prosecutor Thomas M. Finnerty holds the rolling pin Ali-Mohamed Mohamud used to bludgeon to death his 10-year-old stepson.

Principal at International Preparatory School, where the ten-year-old was a fifth-grade student, said there were troubling warning signs, but the family did a good job of covering it up.

Kathy Jamil said in June 2011 he came to school badly beaten up with a swollen forehead and two swollen, black eyes. His father told his teacher he had been in a fight on the bus with another boy.

He had that day been 'horsing around' with another student but no one actually witnessed the alleged fight.

Principal Jamil said: 'It was very suspicious. But because the student had admitted to wrestling with him and pushing him, it was very possible that he had just got hit the wrong way on the window.

'I tried to stress in him that he would be safe with me, and he said, "I just had a fight on the bus.''CPS officials were also said to have investigated after the boy showed up severely bruised at school but never saw fit to remove him from the home.

Principal Jamil also revealed to WIVB 4 that Abdifatah would say alarming things like: 'I'm going to get killed, I'm going to be in so much trouble', but then would follow it by laughing so no one was really sure if he was telling the truth.

She said: 'The students, they've been saying, "Maybe we should have said this" or "Maybe we should have been asking more." The staff also wonders what they could have done differently.'

According to the police report filed last April with CPS, Somalia-born Mohamud explained to the investigating officers that his stepson was accusing him of child abuse because of issues over the boy doing his homework.

When he confessed to killing his son on April 17, he again said he was attempting to discipline his son, who he claimed was kicking him.

The 40-year-old admitted tying up his son's hands, tying him to a chair, sticking a sock in his mouth before duct-taping it shut and then beating him with a rolling pin. He said it was the first time he ever harmed the boy.

An autopsy found he had been struck 70 times.

Police investigators were shocked over the viciousness of the beating, according to Buffalo Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda.

'Every homicide is bad, but it is particularly hard to deal with for first responders, police and others, when it is a ten-year-old child,' he said during a press conference. 'In talking to investigators, I was told it was one of the most grisly crime scenes that they can remember, and some have been here 40 years.'

It was spring break and Abdifatah had just returned from staying at a relative's house for a week when he was killed.

A neighbor, who did not want to be named, told officers she had seen him running for his life down the street. When she stopped to help him he told her: 'I don't want to go back with him.'

The stepfather caught up with them and told her he had fallen behind in his homework and was running away before asking if she could give them a ride home.

She agreed, telling Abdifatah: 'Your daddy says everything will be OK. If something happens come back and tell me tomorrow morning.'

'I may have been the last person to see him alive,' she admitted to police.

It was almost a year before his death that police were called to the house by the frightened ten-year-old, who told them he was being abused, calling back shortly after to tell them to hurry.

Officers reported they did not see any physical signs of abuse on the child when they arrived on April 18, 2011, though they did not ask him to take his clothes off for a closer examination.

According to the Buffalo News, Mohamud downplayed the boy's claims of abuse by saying he and his stepson were at odds over him doing homework.


Warning signs: Islamic School Principle Kathy Jamil said in June 2011 Abdifatah came to school badly beaten up with a swollen forehead and two swollen, black eyes, but did not report it to authorities.

School administrators and teachers said that Abdifatah was a good student who always submitted his homework on time. Two essays he wrote revealed he won awards for his work and was at one stage a top student in his class. He also said his teacher Miss Poole was his hero.

Mohamud is married to the boy's mother, Shukri, and both have children from previous relationships totaling six children, according to the Buffalo News.

Mohamud could face 25 years to life in prison when sentenced Nov. 15.