Russia: Moscow 'Nanny' Detained After Waving Child's Severed Head At Metro Station

Russian authorities detained a nanny dressed in conservative Islamic dress on Monday after she waved the severed head of a child who was in her care outside a Moscow metro station, according to law enforcement sources cited by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

In graphic video footage released by pro-Kremlin news organization Life News, the niqab-clad woman is shown holding the child's head aloft near the Oktyabrskoye Pole (October Field) metro station in northwest Moscow. In the footage, she shouts: "I am a terrorist."

The woman also threatened to blow herself up, RIA Novosti reported, but there has been no indication that she had an explosive device on her person.

According to Russia's RBC, Russian police had stopped the woman to check her documents when she brandished the head from her bag. Authorities had earlier discovered the burnt body of a decapitated child in an apartment near where the incident took place.

RBC reported that the woman was the child's nanny and Russian authorities had detained her for the murder of the child and are subjecting her to a psychiatric evaluation. She is reported to be a national of a Central Asian republic and in her late thirties.

Moscow's Investigative Committee said in a statement: "According to preliminary information, the child's nanny, a citizen of one of the Central Asian states born in 1977, waited for the parents and elder child to leave the flat and then, for reasons not established, murdered the infant, set fire to the flat and left the scene."

It is currently unclear whether the incident is related to extremist motives or if the perpetrator suffers from a mental illness.