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- A German mother is suspected of asphyxiating her five children and then attempting suicide.
- A sixth child survived.
- The mother said she was emotionally overwhelmed.
A 27-year-old German woman is suspected of suffocating five of her children because she was “emotionally overwhelmed,” investigators said Friday, a day after the lifeless bodies were found in her family apartment.
The suspect then attempted suicide by throwing herself under a train, before being rescued with serious but not life-threatening injuries, lead investigator Marcel Maierhofer said.
It is believed that she “carried out the act while feeling emotionally overwhelmed, and that is also why,” the investigator said.
Police believe the three girls, ages one, two and three, and two boys, ages six and eight, were sedated and then suffocated to death on Wednesday or Thursday.
A sixth son, aged 11, survived. He had told his schoolmates in a group chat that all of his siblings were dead, investigators said.
He was likely able to avoid the grim fate of his siblings because he was in school at the time of his murder, Maierhofer said.
Police found the bodies in the suspect’s apartment in the city of Solingen, in the North Rhine-Westphalia state, after the suspect’s mother alerted them, who learned of the fate of her grandchildren from her daughter.
The suspect is believed to be emotionally distressed after the separation from her third husband a year ago.
The man is the father of four of the six children.
