(SEOUL) A 42-year-old woman suspected of murdering two children whose remains were found in suitcases in New Zealand has been arrested in South Korea, South Korean police said Thursday.
Posted at 7:48 a.m.
The woman, believed to be the mother of the two dead children, was taken into custody for murder in South Korea at the request of New Zealand, police in both countries said.
Transferred to Seoul, she will be subject to extradition proceedings, they added.
“Police arrested the suspect at an apartment in Ulsan on Thursday, following surveillance using her whereabouts and CCTV footage,” the Seoul National Police Agency said in a statement. communicated.
“The suspect is accused by New Zealand police of murdering two of her children, aged seven and ten at the time, around 2018 in the Auckland area,” the statement said, adding that “She arrived in South Korea after the crime and had been hiding there ever since. »
The Yonhap news agency said she was a New Zealand citizen who was born in South Korea.
Local media showed footage of a woman, in worn jeans and sandals, being led away by police, covering her head with a coat.
“I didn’t do that,” the woman repeated, fielding reporters’ questions as she was taken away in a police car.
Arriving in Seoul, she was taken to the headquarters of the South Korean capital’s central prosecutor’s office in a police car with tinted windows, according to AFP journalists.
The macabre discovery came last month. The suitcases were part of a trailer loaded with items, purchased by an unsuspecting family at an auction of abandoned property in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city.
According to Auckland Police official, Detective Inspector Tofilau Fa’amanuia Vaaelua, a number of investigations still need to be carried out, both in New Zealand and abroad, in this “very difficult investigation”.