Tourneppe family tragedy: children and mother found dead

Initial observations show that the woman, aged 36, found dead on Monday in Tourneppe (in Dworp), located within Flemish Brabant, was killed following blows using a sharp object. Her three children, two boys aged 10 and 8, and a girl aged 8, are thought to have been suffocated. Autopsies will be carried out on the bodies and a toxicology analysis will take place to determine the exact cause of death in each case. The Hal-Vilvorde Public Prosecutor’s Office is treating the case as murder.

The local police from the Zennevallei (Beersel/Hal/Leeuw-Saint-Pierre) police zone made the distressing discovery on Monday. The police went to the family home to inform the mother and her three children that the body of the woman’s ex-partner, also the father of the children, had been found behind a block of flats on Boulevard Louis Mettewie, in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean.

The police were attending the scene of a car fire in the basement of the block of flats there, and checked the surroundings of the building. During this inspection they found the body of the 39-year-old behind the building. He had obviously had a major fall. The suicide avenue was immediately thought the most likely.

When police from the Zennevallei police zone then discovered the bodies of his ex-wife and their three children, they put forward the hypothesis that the man may reasonably have killed them, before himself committing suicide. However, the precise sequence of events remains difficult to determine at present.

An inquest will also be opened into the death of the man, whose body will also be autopsied.


The Brussels Times


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