The Frenchman, a plumber, has been being treated for depression and psychotic behavior since 2017, the prosecutor said.
French police officers stand on Tuesday in front of a building in Meaux near Paris where five people were found dead. Photo: EPA-EFE
He was previously held in 2019 after stabbing his partner in the shoulder blade when she was pregnant with their third child and attempting to take his own life. She refused to press charges, the prosecutor said.
After that attack, he was treated again and said he had not intended to harm her. The case was dropped because he was classified as “mentally disabled.”
The couple, who met in high school, married in October.
Police broke in through a bedroom window of her ground-floor apartment and found a “very violent crime scene” covered in blood, the prosecutor said.
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According to a police source, the mother was lying in the hallway while the children were found dead in their rooms, kitchen and bathroom.
“The mother and the two girls had suffered a lot of stab wounds,” said the prosecutor.
The two younger boys had no stab wounds and may have been asphyxiated.
Neighbors told police they heard screaming downstairs on the night of Dec. 24-25.
A bouquet of flowers is seen Tuesday on the fence just outside the ground floor apartment in Meaux, France, where the bodies of a woman and her four children were discovered. Photo: AFP
The suspect, who was arrested Tuesday morning near his father's home in the neighboring town of Sevran, has not yet been questioned but told police he “knew why he was arrested” and “spoke of his dissatisfaction and depression.” said Bladier.
He had wounds on his hand.
An investigation has been launched into murder of a minor under 15 and murder by a partner. Autopsies were scheduled to be carried out in Paris on Wednesday.
On Christmas Day, people tied flowers to the railing outside the family's apartment. The local community is in shock.
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“His wife was friendly, she talked to everyone,” said a local man named Antonio, 69, who did not give his last name.
There has recently been a series of child murders in the Paris region.
At the end of November, a 41-year-old man confessed to killing his three daughters, ages four to eleven.
Police found her dead in his home in the town of Alfortville, a southeastern suburb of the capital.
Meaux Mayor Jean-Francois Cope answers journalists' questions on Tuesday following the murder of a woman and her four children in a knife attack early on Christmas Day in Meaux. Photo: Portal
A month earlier, a gendarme killed his three daughters before killing himself in his home in Vemars, northeast of the capital.
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.
Police registered 244,300 victims of domestic violence in 2022, mostly women – a 15 percent increase – which human rights groups see as a sign that law enforcement is taking the problem more seriously.