Liwam Bereket was ‘a beautiful soul full of life, laughter and love’ – and Filmon Andmichaen (pictured) killed her (Picture: SWNS)
A married man stabbed his pregnant girlfriend to death because the baby was a ‘complication he was unwilling to accept’.
Filmon Andmichaen, 31, has been jailed for life for murdering Liwam Bereket, 26, in a Birmingham woodland on August 1 last year.
Despite morning sickness and a volatile relationship with with Mr Andmichaenm, Ms Bereket was happy about her pregnancy 27 weeks in.
But Mr Andmichaen was not. He already had children with his wife who moved from Uganda to live within him after they met on Facebook in September 2021.
He denied he was the father of Ms Bereket’s baby, insisted on a DNA test and demanded she get an abortion, but she refused.
It was at this point ‘Andmichaen made a chilling decision ‘, prosecutor Sandip Patel KC told the court.
‘He decided the life growing inside his girlfriend was a complication he was unwilling to accept. He decided his solution to this was a permanent one.’
Ms Bereket’s friends were already concerned about Mr Andmichaen’s threatening and abusive behaviour.
A neighbour told police he saw the murderer punch Ms Bereket in the face months before.
Now, what Judge Mr Justice Choudhury described as a ‘volatile’ relationship took an even more sinister turn.
Ms Bereket’s family described her as ‘a beautiful soul full of life, laughter and love’ – and Mr Andmichaen killed her.
Ms Bereket’s family asked that people ‘remember her not just as a victim but as a person who loved and was loved’ (Picture: Anita Maric /SWNS)
Ms Bereket was planning to visit a friend when Mr Andmichaen picked her up, took her to a woodland off Freeth Street, Ladywood, and stabbed her in the neck.
She would be found face down, bleeding from the neck in an area of overgrown bushes. Her baby was born stillborn through an emergency caesarean section carried out to try and save it.
Mr Andmichaen ‘said the death of Ms Bereket and his child was a terrible accident and not deliberate’, Mr Patel told the court.
But he took her phone, preventing her from calling for help, while she lay in the grass dying for an hour and a half before he 999 at 9.45pm.
In the meantime, he could be seen on CCTV walking towards a nearby canal carrying a bag, possibly to dispose of the knife, which has never been found, Mr Patel suggested.
He also returned to the scene of the stabbing with his brother, who later told police he was concerned by the sight of Andmichaen in wet clothes and urged him to call 999 if he had committed a crime.
When he finally did, Mr Andmichaen told the call handler he had killed his girlfriend ‘by mistake’ and had also tried to kill himself.
He also asked for officers to attend his address, from where he would lead them to Ms Bereket, even though, as Mr Patel put it, he ‘must have known Liwam’s condition was perilous and that …read more
Source:: Metro
