Local residents described a “surreal” scene, particularly “shocking”: A man threw his two children out of the window of his apartment on the fifth floor of a modest building in the 14th district of Paris on Saturday night, before committing suicide by jumping into the void.
The 49-year-old man died, while his two children, born in 2019 and 2021, “have their life prognosis compromised,” the Paris prosecutor’s office said, confirming a source close to the case.
The prosecutor entrusted the investigations to the PP’s Brigade for the Protection of Minors (DRPJ): an investigation was opened for attempted murder of minors under 15 years of age, in relation to the two children, and to investigate the causes of death, concerning their father.
According to the first elements gathered during the investigation, transmitted by a police source, the man’s actions probably occurred after an argument with his partner.
The incident occurred at around 8:30 p.m., according to a source close to the case.
At the scene, not far from the Porte de Vanves in the south of the capital, police have set up a wide security perimeter to allow passage only to local residents, an AFP journalist noted late in the afternoon.
A medical-psychological emergency unit (CUMP) was activated.
“It is shocking, many of us will be in shock,” said a resident, introducing herself as a resident of the ten-story building where the family lives.
A white tent was set up at the foot of the building and police officers carried a body wrapped in a tarpaulin of the same colour, according to the AFP journalist.
“Noises, screams”
Two witnesses said that the two children had fallen on a lawn in the courtyard of this large residence, which is mainly made up of social housing. According to one of them, children were playing there at the time of the tragedy.
A video showing part of the scene, consulted by AFP, was filmed from one of the many surrounding windows.
“We heard noises, screams,” said Sophie (who did not give her name), a restaurateur who lives in a nearby tower.
According to a neighbor on the sixth floor of the building, who did not reveal her identity, the family had moved here “just a year ago.”
The man “was always smiling, he carried his little daughter on his back, we saw each other in the park, we greeted each other,” confesses this 19-year-old.
She says she never “heard anything” about arguments within the couple. “That’s really what’s shocking: we saw him smile, but we didn’t know that behind his smiles there was something like that,” she says.
Source: AFP
