The mother arrested for suffocating her 1-year-old son to death in a midtown restaurant bathroom on Monday suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and told police she feared someone was going to eat her baby. "I was afraid that someone was going to eat him so I was protecting him," Latisha Fisher, 35, reportedly told police "I put him to sleep with my hand."

Fisher was in the bathroom of 5 Boro Burger, located at 6th Avenue and 36th Street, with her son Gavriel Ortiz-Fisher for about 25 minutes before other customers alerted employees. They unlocked the door to find Fisher holding the unconscious baby in her lap. Witnesses say the boy was foaming at the mouth, and Fisher tried to stop a worker from performing CPR. Gavriel was rushed to Bellevue, where he was pronounced dead.

After questioning, Fisher was charged with second-degree murder. In addition to the delusions about her son being eaten, police say she told them the devil made her do it.

Fisher's husband Luis Fisher told NBC New York that his wife seemed normal when he hugged her and said goodbye in their Lower East Side apartment on Monday morning. "I don't know what happened," he said. "She's a happy mother, she would do anything for her kids. Anything."

NY1 reports that Fisher has been arrested multiple times, including an assault in 2011 in which she pleaded guilty to slashing her victim several times with a steak knife. Her plea deal resulted in two years of treatment for mental illness. The Times reports that Fisher has also attempted suicide and allegedly poured burning oil on an ex-boyfriend's face.

"It was in the past, some years ago, there were some issues with her family and her and stuff like that but lately, nothing. She’s been happy," neighbor Carolyn Lawson tells NBC New York. “I guess it’s true what they say: you never know what a person is going through, only what you see on the outside." Another neighbor told NBC that Fisher is "crazy and that everyone is afraid of her."

Others who knew Fisher said the birth of Gavriel, her second child, appeared to turn her life around—she was taking regular medication to treat her schizophrenia and was enrolled in classes at community college. The Administration for Children's Services had not received a complaint about Fisher or been in contact with her since 2011. From the NY Times:

The older son, who has autism, came back from one supervised visit with Ms. Fisher in 2011 with a cigarette burn on his chest, the relative said. Though his father and stepmother took him to the child welfare agency, he became frightened and would not repeat his accusation that his mother had injured him.

The complaint was dismissed for lack of evidence, according to the relative and a city official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the cases are confidential.

Ms. Fisher spent her childhood bouncing from group home to group home. As a child, she had been removed from her crack-addicted mother’s home after she set fire to her mother’s sleeping boyfriend, the relative said...

...Friends knew she sometimes clung to strange fixations. Around Halloween, Mr. Rivera said, she had found something new.

When Mr. Rivera dropped by her apartment to give her a package in late October, the living room was dotted with lit candles and books on witchcraft, one opened to a section labeled “sacrifice.” Smoke billowed from a pot on the stove that Ms. Fisher said was part of a ceremony. On one table, candles surrounded a glass goblet filled with red liquid.

The Times has much more on Fisher's troubled past and present. As of late yesterday she was still at Bellevue hospital and had not been arraigned.