PARIS
\nFrench police on Tuesday arrested a 33-year-old man suspected of murdering his wife and their four children who were found dead at home on Christmas Day, a prosecutor said.
\nAuthorities discovered the bodies of the 35-year-old and her children — aged nine months, four, seven and 10 years old — in their flat in the town of Meaux east of Paris on Monday evening, after worried friends and family sounded the alarm, local prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier said.
\nThe French man, who trained as a plumber, had already been detained in 2019 after trying to kill himself and stabbing his partner in the shoulder blade when she was pregnant with their third child, but she had refused to press charges, Bladier said.Documents found in their home indicated he had been receiving psychiatric treatment since 2017.
\nThe couple, who had met in high school, had their four children before they married in October, he said.Police broke in through a bedroom window of their ground-floor flat to find a \u201cvery violent crime scene\u201d covered in blood, the prosecutor said.
\nA police source said that mother was lying in the corridor, while the children were found dead in their rooms, in the kitchen and bathroom. \u201cThe mother and the two girls had received a very high number of knife wounds,\u201d the prosecutor said.The two younger boys presented no stab wounds and could have been suffocated.
\nThe suspect, who was arrested near his father\u2019s home in the neighbouring town of Sevran on Tuesday morning, had not yet been questioned but told police \u201che knew why he had been detained, and spoke of his unhappiness and depression,\u201d Bladier said. He was receiving medical care for wounds to his hand.
\nNeighbours told police they had heard cries downstairs in the night of December 24 to 25. An inquiry has been opened into the murder of minors, and murder by a partner. Autopsies were to be carried out in Paris on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS French police on Tuesday arrested a 33-year-old man suspected of murdering his wife and their four children who were found dead at home on Christmas Day, a prosecutor said. Authorities discovered the bodies of the 35-year-old and her children — aged nine months, four, seven and 10 years old — in their flat in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-376994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n