BOBIGNY (AFP) – French police arrested a man suspected of murdering a mother and her four children found dead at home, a law enforcement source said yesterday.
Authorities discovered the bodies of the woman and her children aged nine months, four, seven and 10 in their flat in the town of Meaux east of Paris on Monday evening after worried relatives sounded the alarm, local prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier said.
The police source said the main suspect had been detained in the nearby town of Sevran.
“The flat showed no sign of breaking and entering, and the father was absent,” he said earlier.
A source close to the case said the 35-year-old mother and her children were killed with “a cold weapon”, a term usually used to refer to a knife. The source said police had been looking for a 33-year-old man.
The Versailles judicial police service opened an inquiry into “premeditated murder”.
The Paris region has recently seen a series of infanticides.
