St. Paul, Minn. -- A Villanova University history professor accused of fatally slitting her 6-month-old daughter's throat was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder.\nThe girl, Raya Donagi, was found bleeding and unconscious Monday after her grandmother called 911 at about 9 a.m.\nPolice said the girl's mother, Mine An Ener, gave the infant her morning feeding and then carried her to the bathroom, pausing in the kitchen to get a knife. Police said she told them she laid the baby on her back and then leaned over, pressing the 12-inch knife's blade twice across Raya's throat.\n"I killed my baby with a knife," authorities said Ener, 38, told medics when they arrived.\nPolice said Ener sat with her hands crossed in front of her chest, her mother holding her from behind as the medics tried to revive the child, who was pronounced dead at the grandmother's St. Paul home.\nEner, a professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, had recently returned to Minnesota with her daughter to be with family as she struggled with depression, police and relatives said.\nEner, 38, told police she suffered from postpartum depression and was on medication. The child was born with Down syndrome and at one point needed to be fed through a tube. She told police she wanted to give the baby relief.\n"She felt the baby was suffering," said police Sgt. Bruce Wynkoop.\nEner also told police she had thought about killing herself for several weeks.\nA preliminary autopsy showed the baby bled to death from two neck wounds.\nNobody answered the door Tuesday at the family's St. Paul home.\nEner, who grew up in St. Paul, graduated from St. Paul Central High School and went on to St. Paul's Macalester College. She earned her doctorate from the University of Michigan and took a job at Villanova in 1996. She worked in the university's Center for Arab and Islamic Studies.\n"She's had a very good and strong record here," said John Johannes, vice president of academic affairs at Villanova. "She's being published and she's a good scholar. She is very accomplished."\nMichael Bonner, who met Ener in the 1980s when she was attending graduate school at the University of Michigan, where he currently teaches, said the allegations were "not remotely in her character."\n"I always thought she was a highly motivated but balanced person," said Bonner, who edited a book with Ener.
-- Associated Press writer Jennifer Kay contributed to this report.
