DW.com Germany Fri., Sept. 04, 2020
Prosecutors in the western city of Solingen have launched an investigation into five potential murders. The autopsies of the five children all indicate suffocation and sedation.
Authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia have filed five murder charges and an arrest warrant against a 27-year-old woman who is currently receiving medical attention after jumping in front of a train. The mother of six was not yet ready for arrest or questioning on Friday afternoon.
“Five children from Solingen have died in a tragically awful manner,” the leader of the police investigation, Robert Gereci, said at a press conference in Solingen. “Police found five children dead in an apartment in a large house.”
Gereci confirmed the identities and ages of the three girls aged 1,2 and 3, and the two boys aged 6 and 8. Police and medical officials believe the children died in the night between Wednesday and Thursday.
The head of the homicide panel investigating the case, Marcel Maierhofer, said that the autopsies of the children all indicated evidence of suffocation and of sedation.
The mother’s eldest child, an 11-year-old boy, went to school as normal on Thursday morning. The mother later phoned the call saying she wanted to take him out of school, citing a death in the family. She took him to Dusseldorf station, where she jumped in front of a train, seemingly “with suicidal intent,” Maierhofer said.
Investigators also said they were investigating the possibility that her separation from her husband, around one year earlier, might have played a part in the case. They said that from the point of view of the prosecution as it stood, there was no evidence yet of circumstances during the coronavirus having exacerbated matters.
None of the three fathers was considered a suspect at the time, investigators said.
Professor Stefan Röpke from the Charite told DW that such cases of so-called extended suicide were more common in men but not unheard of in women.
“There can be cases where people simply completely lose their grasp on reality, with a severe psychological condition or even a psychotic break. These people might say, I must kill them to save them. Or they might wish to take their own lives and then ask themselves who will then care for their kids,” Röpke said.
“In a case of extended suicide the crime isn’t really even targeting the children as such, instead the individual often just wants to take their own lives and to leave a clean slate, so to speak.”
Full article here: https://www.dw.com/en/solingen-murder-germany-mother/a-54814975
