A woman and her four children, aged between nine months and ten years, were killed in the apartment where they lived in Meaux, about 50 kilometers from Paris, on Christmas Day, reported the Associated Press (AP).
Meanwhile, prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier told journalists that neighbors alerted authorities after seeing a pool of blood outside the family’s apartment on Christmas Day.
The mother and two daughters, aged seven and ten, were stabbed repeatedly in the early hours of Monday. The couple’s children, aged nine months and four years, were asphyxiated or drowned.
The motive for the homicides is unclear. The suspect, a 33-year-old man of French nationality, was arrested on Tuesday near his father’s house, on the outskirts of Paris.
The man had already stabbed his partner once, when she was pregnant, in 2019, but the investigation into the case was shelved because the suspect was considered mentally unstable during the attack.
In 2017, he had already been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and had attempted suicide. According to the prosecutor, the couple had been together for around 14 years and had known each other since high school.
Authorities have already opened an investigation into the five homicides and the suspect will now undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine the next steps.