Five dead in an apartment in Pau: a family dispute turns to massacre

"Blood filaments" on a facade, a couch that burns, a violent dispute evoked by a neighbor: the investigators preferred on Tuesday the track of the family dispute which turns to the mbadacre after the discovery of the bodies of four adults and a child by firefighters in an apartment in Pau.

These are the firefighters, called around 06H40 for fumes that emanated from an apartment on the first floor of a four-storey residence in the city center of Pau, which made the macabre discovery.

When they entered the apartment, "a couch was burning up". They discovered the bodies of four adults and a child.

"It's about two couples and a child, the drama took place inside (of the apartment). traces of violence on a couple and the wife of the other. "All suggests that we are on the trail of a family tragedy," told AFP a source close to the investigation.

"The young woman was found bound and gagged with adhesive around her neck," said the source. According to neighbors interviewed by the daily Sud Ouest, "the disputes were frequent within the couple". According to a colleague of the wife, interviewed by the newspaper, she reportedly recently filed a complaint for violence against her husband.

According to the source close to the investigation, there is "no trace of apparent violence on the child, who died as a result of the fire," probably intoxicated by smoke.

Firefighters were alerted by someone "who could not open the door of the apartment" and "worried because she saw blood running down the edge of one of the windows of the apartment", the firemen said.

"I saw blood filaments running down the street," a neighbor evacuated with another twenty residents of the building told AFP.

– Big fight, cries of children –

Seizure of the investigation, the judicial police always sought on Tuesday morning to identify precisely the victims.

According to the neighbor interviewed by AFP, the apartment was occupied by a Franco-Spanish couple, parents of a child of two years. The man was French. His wife, a 30-year-old Spanish woman, was a teacher.

The young woman's parents, the Spaniards from Zaragoza (northeastern Spain), came to visit them in Pau. "A big fight broke out at 5:00 am, I heard screams of children," said the neighbor.

Once there, the twenty firefighters dispatched to the scene "quickly mastered" the fire.

Autopsies should be held in the coming days.

"As a result of a fire, someone would have set a sofa on fire, neighbors seeing smoke this morning have alerted firefighters, it seems that there was a family dispute that turned to mbadacre" , summed up for AFP Jean-Paul Brin, first deputy mayor of Pau.