He then allegedly decided to ‘hide his crime’ by chopping the girls body up and burning her in the oven, police said. Regional police commander in Zhytomyr, Artem Lisogor, said: ‘The father pushed or hit the girl.
The child fell down and crashed her head against the threshold. ‘The girl passed out and did not recover. The father decided to hide this crime, so the child was put inside the stove and burned.’
A murder investigation has now been launched, nine months after the girl was killed. Makarchuk’s wife, 41, has also been arrested on suspicion of being an accessory to murder.
When police arrived at their home, the couple allegedly dressed their son, three, in girl’s clothes to make it seem that Darina was still alive.
Darina had been living with a foster family for at least two years and was only given back to her biological parents three months before her death.
Police said the parents, who have three other children, ‘confessed’ to the attempt to cover-up Darina’s death and admitted she had been thrown into the stove.
The unnamed mother told police that after shoving the child, her husband had tried to give the girl ‘artificial respiration’ but she did not respond. He then lit a fire in the stove and ‘carried her charred remains to the river’, where they still have not been located.
Police spokesperson Alexander Radchenko said: ‘We are doing our best to verify the information and establish all the circumstances.’ There is a separate row over the case because police complained that local social activists had successfully campaigned for the girl to be returned to her natural family from a ‘loving’ foster home.
The foster mother Natalya Kobernik had sought to overturn the ruling, arguing that Darina would not be properly cared for – but she was told Makarchuk was a ‘reliable and normal’ parent.
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