Mother finds three children hacked to death
A mother discovered three children dead after a brutal killer tried to hack off their heads, police in the US said today.
The woman found one child decapitated and the other two partially decapitated at an apartment in Baltimore, Maryland.
A man was arrested and was being questioned by detectives in connection with the killings of the nine-year-old sisters and a 10-year-old boy.
The woman who made the gruesome discovery was believed to be the mother of at least one of the children, according to the Baltimore Sun newspaper.
Police received a call from the woman who told the operator: “There’s blood all over my apartment. They’ve killed my family.”
The children were found dead yesterday afternoon local time shortly after they had returned home from school.
Even hardened police officers were shocked by the brutality of the crime scene in north west Baltimore.
The man being questioned was described by police as “a person of interest only”. He has not been charged and police said he was co-operating.
He was detained after the woman who made the discovery alleged he had had a dispute with her family.
Deputy Police Commissioner Kenneth Blackwell said police are also “looking elsewhere”, suggesting there may be more suspects.
Officers were also trying to establish whether the apartment had been broken into.
A Fire Department medic unit was the first on the scene.
“You can imagine their feeling when they saw what was inside the apartment,” fire department spokesman Kevin Cartwright told the Baltimore Sun.
The first police officer to enter the apartment was overcome by the scene, which Mr Blackwell described as “gruesome” and “something I’ve not seen before in all the years I’ve been a part of the agency”.
The apartment is in an area listed as having historic architecture.
Gregory Carter, who lives in another apartment in the building, told the newspaper that the children were “carefree”.
He said: “Every time I saw them, they was playing cheerfully out in the yard.”
Theresa Hopson, 58, who lives nearby, said the children would often play together under a willow tree near her home.
“They were beautiful children,” she said. “When you saw one, you saw all three. They appeared to be very close to each other. It’s devastating, absolutely devastating.”
