UK NEWS

COUPLE ARRESTED AFTER CHILDREN'S STABBING

Flowers outside the house where the children were found stabbed

Saturday May 31,2008

By Julia White for express.co.uk

A COUPLE have been arrested over the deaths of two young children who were found stabbed last night at a house in south London.

A five-year-old boy and four-year-old girl suffered severe stab wounds at a detached house in Carshalton at 10.30pm last night.

They died in hospital within minutes of each other just before midnight.

A third child from the house, a six-month old baby girl, is seriously ill in hospital with suspected stab wounds.

A 39-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman, believed to be their parents, are under arrest.

Officers were called to number 111, Park Lane in Carshalton around 10.30pm last night.

Police outside the house this morning

One neighbour described a “horrific” scene late last night as paramedics tried to revive a “limp little body”.

She saw “a tiny bundle” carried out of the house just after 10.30pm. “It was obviously a child,” she said. “It’s horrific for something like this to happen here.”

Neighbour Jim Duffy described seeing a woman, seemingly unhurt, leaving the house with blood stains on her back.

He said: “We saw them bringing a child out and then about half an hour later they came out with another child.

“Then a woman who had blood on her dress, on her back. She was dressed in Indian style clothes and they took her into an ambulance, not a police car.

“About half an hour later a chap came out. He was quite calm and the police were being quite calm with him. They didn’t handcuff him at first and he sat in the front of the police van making a telephone call.

“They later put him in the cage at the back of the van and he seemed to have some sort of argument with the police but he didn’t look like he was resisting arrest.”

The couple are thought to be from the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka and had moved in to the area within the last year.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said officers were called at 10.30pm last night and found three seriously injured children.

“Police and London Ambulance attended, and found three children suffering serious injuries, believed to be stab wounds,” he said.

The spokesman added: “We believe we know the identity of the deceased, however we await formal identification and confirmation that all family members have been informed.”