A father, suspected of having killed a mother and her four children, aged nine months to 10 years, on Monday evening at their home in Meaux in Seine-et-Marne, was arrested Tuesday morning in the neighboring department of Seine -Saint-Denis, in Sevran, AFP learned from a police source. The man was already known for acts of domestic violence and psychiatric disorders, said another police source.
Around 9 p.m., the police intervened at the home of this family, on the ground floor of a residential building, alerted by relatives of the victims, said Tuesday the prosecutor, Jean-Baptiste Bladier, before the press in court. Traces of blood were visible on the landing. Inside, on the “crime scene, of very great violence”, five bodies were discovered: those of the 35-year-old mother and the four young children, a 10-year-old girl, a second seven-year-old , a four-year-old boy and a nine-month-old infant, explained Jean-Baptiste Bladier.
The suspect spoke of his “personal discomfort”
“The mother and the two little girls had been victims of a very large number of knife wounds” impossible to count, he said. No apparent trace of wound was found on the boys, for whom the hypothesis of suffocation or drowning is considered. The autopsies will take place on Wednesday in Paris. According to a police source, confirmed by the prosecutor, extensive analysis of video surveillance images made it possible to trace the suspect.
Arrested in Sevran in Seine-Saint-Denis at his father’s house, the accused, of French nationality, indicated “knowing why he was in police custody, spoke of his personal discomfort and his depression”, according to the prosecutor. Since 2017, he has been monitored for depressive and psychotic disorders. Prescriptions prescribing tranquilizers were found at the home. He is hospitalized, under police custody, for significant injuries to his hand. At the end of his police custody, a judicial investigation will be opened for “intentional homicide of minors under 15 years of age” and “intentional homicide by spouse”.
Stabbing in 2019
The premises of the investigation revealed previous acts of violence among this couple, who had known each other since high school and had married in October 2023. The man’s criminal record is “devoid of any antecedent”, underlined the prosecutor. In November 2019, the father stabbed his wife in the shoulder blade, when she was a month and a half from giving birth. The victim, born in Haiti, refused to file a complaint and did not seek assistance from an association helping victims of violence.
An investigation was opened and the spouse was placed in police custody before being hospitalized in a psychiatric unit. He had claimed that he did not want to harm his wife whom he loved: the “stab went off on its own” he declared at the time, the prosecutor reported. The procedure had been dismissed on the grounds of deficient mental state, Jean-Baptiste Bladier told the press. An expert report had attested to the existence of the abolition of discernment in the accused, monitored since 2017 for depressive and psychotic disorders.