A man with a history of psychiatric illness stabbed his partner and her two young children to death in Mormant, a peaceful little town in Seine-et-Marne, then injured two people in the street before being arrested on Saturday.
The man was arrested around 6:30 a.m. by a police officer on his way to work, while he was attacking people with a knife in the streets of this town of 5,000 inhabitants, located 60 kilometers southeast of Paris, according to the Melun public prosecutor.
A pedestrian was injured in the arm and another in the neck, “both without serious consequences”, prosecutor Jean-Michel Bourlès told AFP.
The man then confessed to the police officer that he had killed his wife and two children, we learned from the prosecutor and sources close to the case.
At his home, the police discovered the three victims, his partner and their two children aged 22 months and five years, stabbed to death. The ages of the man and his partner have not been released.
Asked by AFP, the town’s mayor Pierre-Yves Nicot indicated that one of the two children killed was a little girl who had just started the final year of primary school at the Mormant nursery school.
The suspect has no criminal record but a “psychiatric history,” added Mr. Bourlès. He is currently hospitalized to check whether his condition is compatible with police custody.
“I am a mayor who is shocked by the horror of the event, to the extent that there were no precursors,” reacted the first elected official.
“We are obviously stunned by this news, it is a quiet neighborhood, it is a family that was also quiet, in any case unknown to the police services, to our own services,” added the independent elected official.
– Medical-psychological unit –
The events took place in a working-class area of the city, in a social housing building which includes between six and eight apartments.
Between these modest two-story gray buildings, a deceptive calm leaves little suspicion of the drama that played out there in the middle of the night. With closed faces, few residents linger in the street.
A police crime scene van is parked in front of one of the stairwells, and access to the building is blocked by yellow tape.
“I heard screaming around 3-4am,” an elderly neighbour told AFP, her daughter taking her elsewhere. When around 7am, “I took my dog out, I saw all the police and everything.”
In the morning, Ismaïl is woken up by his wife, worried about the presence of investigators, and notices the suspect’s brother sitting on the steps, collapsed.
“I went to see him. He told me ‘my brother, I don’t know what happened to him, he’s gone crazy’,” says this resident who has known the family for a long time.
The town hall will open a medical-psychological reception unit on Sunday from 10:00 a.m. in the village hall “for all people, neighbors who feel the need to express themselves or to talk with professionals,” according to the mayor.
The Paris Research Section was tasked with the investigations, jointly with the Melun Research Brigade.
The investigation is open for voluntary homicide and voluntary violence with a weapon, the prosecutor said.
On average, a femicide occurs every three days in France. According to the Ministry of Justice, there were 94 in 2023, compared to 118 in 2022.
According to the Ministerial Statistical Service for Internal Security (SSMSI), 60 minors died violent deaths within the family in 2022, compared to 49 in 2021.
In 2023, more than 60 children were killed by their parents, according to La Voix de l’Enfant, an association that keeps a count based on cases reported in the media.
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