(Meaux) A 33-year-old father, suspected of having killed his wife and their four children on Christmas Eve at their home not far from Paris “in a very violent crime scene”, was arrested Tuesday near the crime scene and suffers from psychiatric disorders.
Around 9 p.m. Monday, the police intervened at the home of this family, on the ground floor of a residential building, alerted by relatives of the victims, reported Tuesday the prosecutor of Meaux (40 km east of Paris) Jean-Baptiste Bladier, in front of the press.
Traces of blood were visible on the landing. Inside, at the “crime scene, very violent”, five bodies were discovered: those of the 35-year-old mother and four young children, a 10-year-old girl, a second seven-year-old , a four-year-old boy and a nine-month-old infant, explained Mr. Bladier.
“The mother and the two little girls had been victims of a very large number of knife wounds” which were impossible to count, he said. No apparent trace of wound was found on the boys, for whom the hypothesis of suffocation or drowning is considered. The autopsies will take place on Wednesday in Paris.
According to a police source, confirmed by the prosecutor, extensive analysis of video surveillance images made it possible to trace the suspect.
PHOTO ALAIN JOCARD, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Arrested in Sevran (a suburb of Paris) at his father’s house, the accused, of French nationality, indicated “knowing why he was in police custody, spoke of his personal discomfort and his depression”, according to the prosecutor .
Since 2017, he has been monitored for depressive and psychotic disorders. Prescriptions prescribing tranquilizers were found at the home.
The beginnings of the investigation revealed previous acts of violence among this couple formed 14 years ago and married in October 2023. The man’s criminal record is “devoid of any antecedent”, underlined the prosecutor.
In November 2019, the father stabbed his wife in the shoulder blade, when she was a month and a half from giving birth. The victim, born in Haiti, refused to file a complaint and did not seek assistance from an association helping victims of violence.
An investigation was opened and the spouse was placed in police custody before being hospitalized in a psychiatric unit. He had claimed that he did not want to harm his wife whom he loved: the “stab went off on its own”, he declared, reported the prosecutor.
The procedure was dismissed on the grounds of deficient mental state, Mr. Bladier said. An expert report had attested to the existence of the abolition of discernment in men, monitored since 2017 for depressive and psychotic disorders.
The mother of the family was “a very good person, known to everyone, very jovial. She lived for her family. The gentleman was not working, she was the one who supported the family,” Nadine Coulibaly assured the press, presenting herself as the friend and neighbor who alerted the police.
On average, a feminicide occurs every three days in France: 118 women were killed last year by their spouse or ex-spouse.
And recent news has been marked by two triple infanticides perpetrated by fathers in Île-de-France.