Mother who sparked armed siege falsely claimed £26 000 benefits

Sabena Ruwizhi

A mother who threatened to shoot her children has now admitted falsely claiming £26,000 in benefits.

 Sabena Ruwizhi, 30, sparked an armed siege in May 2008 after she told police she was holding a gun to the heads of her two toddlers and another boy.

Miss Ruwizhi, who has now been reunited with the youngsters, spoke exclusively to Cambridge News Online about her "desperate" actions.

The threats to her children resulted in a 29-hour stand-off with armed police at her Cherry Hinton home.At one point during the siege, 50 armed police officers surrounded her house in Drayton Road and terrified residents were trapped inside their homes.

Notes were passed through Miss Ruwizhi’s door in a bid to make her come out peacefully but the siege did not end until police stormed in the house and shot her with a Taser gun.

It turned out that the Zimbabwean mum did not have a gun.After pleading guilty to two counts of making threats to kill, Miss Ruwizhi was sentenced in October 2008.

She was given an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for two years. Having been reunited with her children, now three and four, she now lives with them in Littleport.

Speaking from her home, Miss Ruwizhi said she was in a "desperate, desperate situation" at the time because she feared she would be deported.

She said: "I would never, ever cause my children any harm.

"I wanted to act as a voice for all the other immigrants out there who were living in the hell that I was."

Miss Ruwizhi came to the UK with a six-month student visa in 1999. She ended up overstaying her six-month visa, meaning she was unable to work.

In a bid to earn a wage, she paid £300 for a fake Portuguese passport under the name Sabena Luigi and was able to get work as a carer.She later fell pregnant to an American RAF man while working in Cambridge, which is when the council provided her with accommodation in Cherry Hinton.

But after living for months in fear that she would be deported without her two children, Miss Ruwizhi was driven to spark the siege.

She said: "I was going crazy inside and the stress was literally eating at me like cancer.

"I was just a woman in a desperate, desperate situation who needed help and I am blessed that the judge had mercy on my children and I."

The mum now faces further court action, however.Her false papers allowed her to claim a total of £26,000 in benefits between April 2005 and May 2008, including £9,485 in income support payments and £2,440 in council tax exemption.

Miss Ruwizhi has pleaded guilty to six counts of dishonesty, including making a false statement to obtain money.The mum insists she "had no clue" about what benefits she was receiving and what she was or was not entitled to.

Cambridge Crown Court has adjourned the case for the preparation of pre-sentence reports and she will return in the week beginning February 22 for sentence.