A 33-year-old father, suspected of having killed his wife and their four children on Monday evening at their home in Meaux in Seine-et-Marne, was arrested this Tuesday in Sevran (Seine-Saint-Denis). He suffers from psychiatric disorders, according to the Meaux public prosecutor.
This Monday, December 25, around 9:00 p.m., the police intervened at the home of this family, on the ground floor of a residential building, alerted by relatives of the victims, the prosecutor reported on Tuesday , Jean-Baptiste Bladier, in front of the press at the judicial court.
This quintuple homicide, on Christmas Day, is part of a series of infanticides committed by fathers since October in the Paris region.
Traces of blood were visible on the landing. Inside, on the “crime scene, of very great violence”, five bodies were discovered: those of the 35-year-old mother and the 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” 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.
Arrested in Sevran (Seine-Saint-Denis) 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.
He is hospitalized, under police custody, for significant injuries to his hand.
At the end of his police custody, a judicial investigation will be opened for “intentional homicide of minors under 15 years old” and “intentional homicide by spouse”.
Man known for stabbing his wife
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, the prosecutor reported.
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.
A series of infanticides
At the scene of the tragedy (a residence accessible to vehicles only after passing an automatic barrier) a few police officers were present on Tuesday in front of the family apartment, demarcated by warning tape.
A few neighbors, looking stunned, were gathered, noted an AFP journalist.
The mother of the family was “a very good person, known to everyone, very jovial. She lived for her family. The gentleman did not work, it was she who supported the family”, assured the press Nadine Coulibaly, introducing herself like the friend and neighbor who alerted the police.
“I can’t explain his actions. He’s someone in his own bubble, he wasn’t talking to anyone,” repeated this neighbor, who was informed of the partner’s psychiatric problems.
According to her, the couple was not in the process of separating, an element sometimes triggering an act.
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 Ile-de-France.
At the end of November, a man already convicted of domestic violence went to a police station to confess to the murder of his three daughters aged four to 11 in Alfortville (Val-de-Marne). Previously, in October, a gendarme had killed his three daughters before killing himself in Vémars (Val-d’Oise).