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Martin Meissner / AP
A police officer passes candles and teddy bears at the entrance of a house where five dead children were found in Solingen, Germany.
German prosecutors said on Friday (local time) that they will charge a 27-year-old woman with murder after five of her young children were found dead at her home in the western city of Solingen.
Heribert Kaune-Gebhardt, a prosecutor in nearby Wuppertal, told reporters that post-mortem examinations of the dead children showed signs of sedation and suffocation, but it was not yet clear how exactly they had died.
The mother, who sent her oldest son to stay with his grandmother on Thursday before attempting to kill herself by jumping in front of a train, has not yet been questioned by police, authorities said.
Martin Meissner / AP
Toys and candles are placed in the mailbox of an apartment building where the five dead children were found.
The killings have caused widespread commotion in Germany.
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Wuppertal police said the children’s grandmother had alerted authorities to a possible crime shortly before 2 p.m. Thursday. Officers who arrived at the family’s home within minutes forced the door open and found three girls, ages 1, 2 and 3, and two boys, ages 6 and 8, dead in their beds.
Martin Meissner / AP
Forensic scientists investigate the apartment where the children’s bodies were found.
There were no signs of physical violence, said Marcel Maierhofer of the Wuppertal police force.
So far, investigators have determined that the woman’s 11-year-old son left for school as usual on Thursday morning. Later, her mother picked her up from school and told her to go to her grandmother, Maierhofer said.
The suspect also sent his mother a message saying that she “could not continue” and cited marital problems with the father of her four minor children.
Martin Meissner / AP
The deaths have shocked Germany.
“We can only speculate that the motive was the strained marriage,” Maierhofer said.
