Police suspect official misconduct in a case in which a woman remanded into pre-investigation custody at the Vantaa prison took her own life.
The incident occurred in February and involved a 35-year-old woman who had been detained after allegedly suffocating her two-year-old with a pillow at her home in Espoo. Police were investigating the case as homicide.
Police suspect that prison staff did not monitor the suspect closely enough and are looking into how it was possible for the incident to occur, lead investigator, detective chief inspector Timo Luoto of the Itä-Uusimaa police department told news agency STT.
"We are looking into whether or not prison employees possibly acted incorrectly in some way," Luoto said.
The investigator would not comment on the number of suspects police are probing. According to Luoto, police have a low threshold for examining deaths that occur during pre-trial detention.
"Whether or not it leads to a record of a prosecutable offence is a different matter," he added.
Luoto said that prison officials had provided reports and material relating to the case and he estimated that the investigation would not take long. However he did not speculate on how long.
Suspect spoke of self-harm
After remanding the British national into custody, police were able to interview her several times before her death. According to her account, a district court decided that her young child would spend just two nights per week with her, and would be with the father the remaining time.
According to police records, she recounted how she picked up the child from daycare one Friday afternoon in January when the court handed down its decision.
That night she took a pillow and placed it on the child’s face and after suffocating the infant, she also used a knife on the child afterwards, the woman reportedly told police. Under questioning, she reportedly said that she tried many ways to take her own life.
Tabloid daily Iltalehti reported that shortly before her death and during her detention, the suspect had been placed in hospital care for attempting to kill herself.
Police have not revealed the circumstances under which the woman died or the cause of death since the case is being treated as an investigation into the cause of death and no direct foul play is suspected in her death.