Family drama in France: Man apparently shoots wife and four children

The Versailles criminal investigation department said it had opened an investigation into the murder of minors under the age of 15 and murder by a partner. The suspected perpetrator has not yet been questioned, said local prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier. However, he had told the police that he knew "why he had been arrested". He also told the officers "about his dissatisfaction and his depression". The alleged perpetrator also had injuries to his hand.

Authorities had found the bodies of a 35-year-old woman and her children, aged nine months, four, seven and ten years, in her apartment in Meaux near Paris on Christmas Day, according to prosecutor Bladier. "The apartment showed no signs of a break-in and the father was not present." The officers had acted on a tip-off from concerned relatives. Neighbors reported screams on the first floor to the police on the night of December 24-25.

After being alerted by the neighbors, police officers reportedly broke into the first floor apartment through a bedroom window. There they found a "very violent crime scene". According to police sources, the mother was lying in the hallway. The children were found dead in their rooms, in the kitchen and in the bathroom. According to the public prosecutor, the woman and the two girls had suffered "a very high number of stab wounds". The two younger boys may have been suffocated.

According to the public prosecutor's office, the father of the family had been receiving treatment for depression and psychotic behavior since 2017. He had already been arrested once before in 2019: Back then, he had stabbed his pregnant girlfriend in the shoulder blade and subsequently tried to kill himself. However, the woman had refused to press charges against her partner. According to the public prosecutor, the man underwent treatment again after the attack and the investigation was dropped. The couple, who knew each other from their school days, finally got married in October.

Meaux is located around 45 kilometers east of Paris. On Christmas Day, numerous people laid flowers in front of the family's home. The woman was friendly, said a 69-year-old resident who did not want to give his surname. "She spoke to everyone."

There have been a number of child killings in the Paris region recently. At the end of November, a 41-year-old man from Alfortville in the south-east of the capital confessed to killing his three daughters, aged between four and eleven. A month earlier, a police officer killed his three daughters and himself in Vémars, north-east of Paris.

On average, a woman is killed every three days in France. Last year, around 118 women were killed by their partners or ex-partners in France. Activists accuse the law enforcement authorities of not taking the problem seriously enough.