Photo: BENOIT TESSIER / Reuters / NTB
A 33-year-old man has been arrested after a woman and her four young children were found murdered in their own home outside Paris.
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The five victims were found in their home on Christmas Day in the family home in the French commune of Meaux, east of the capital Paris.
The children who were killed were nine months, four, seven and ten years old. The man accused in the case is supposed to be the father of the children.
Concerned relatives raised the alarm and led the police to move out and find the victims, the French public prosecutor’s office says.
Storavisen LeParisien writes that a friend of the murdered child’s mother raised the alarm.
– An entire family was killed, stabbed in horrific circumstances. This is horrible, says the mayor of Meaux, Jean-François Cope AP.
On Tuesday, a police source stated that the main suspect had been arrested near the town of Sevran.
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Photo: Christophe Petit Tesson / EPA / NTB Photo: Christophe Petit Tesson / EPA / NTB
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Photo: Christophe Petit Tesson / EPA / NTB
Probably stabbed
– There were no signs of a break-in in the apartment, and the father was not present, says the police source.
Another source close to the investigation says the 35-year-old mother was killed with “a cold weapon”, which usually means a knife.
Neighbors discovered a pool of blood outside the family’s front door on Christmas Day. The mother and two daughters, aged 7 and 10, had been stabbed several times from Sunday to Monday.
This is stated by the prosecutor in the case, Jean-Paptiste Bladier.
The sons, aged 4 years and 9 months, were suffocated or drowned, writes the news agency AP.
Unknown motive
Flowers, a teddy bear and garlands now hang on the fence outside the apartment building to remember the victims. The windows where the murders took place are covered.
The motive of the 33-year-old perpetrator is not known. He was arrested outside his home east of Paris.
– An entire family was killed, stabbed in horrific circumstances. This is horrible, said the mayor of Meauz, Jean-François Cope, according to AP.
CONDEMN THE KILLINGS: Mayor Jean-François Cope of Meaux, France, where the brutal murder of a mother and her four children took place. Photo: Christophe Petit Tesson / EPA / NTB
Has been stabbed before
The accused in the case is said to have stabbed the mother of his children once before when she was pregnant with the couple’s eldest son in 2019.
The investigation was then dropped because the suspect was declared criminally insane, AP writes.
The 33-year-old was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 2017 and is also said to have tried to take his own life this year, according to prosecutor Jean-Paptiste Bladier.
The parents had been together for 14 years and had known each other since high school, he says.
REMEMBER THE DEAD: Residents of Meaux leave flowers and greetings after the murder. Photo: ALAIN JOCARD / AFP
The neighbors AP has spoken to are horrified by the incident.
– This was just a mother who fought for her children, she never complained, says neighbor Maissa Kefti.
– We all got a lump in our stomachs when we found out what had happened. We cannot imagine what it must have been like.
Killing wave
The murders have reawakened the debate about domestic violence:
More than 100 women have been killed by their current or former partners so far this year France.
In 2022, 118 female homicide victims of domestic violence were registered in France, according to a rapport from the Ministry of the Interior. There is an increase of 15 per cent compared to 2021, writes The Guardian.
Recently, there have been a number of murders of young children in the Paris region.
At the end of November, a 41-year-old man admitted to killing his three daughters, who were aged between four and eleven. He turned himself in to the police.
In October, a policeman murdered his three daughters before taking his own life.
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Published:
Published: 27.12.23 at 01:31
2023-12-27 00:31:41
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