Father kills own children, flees on roller skates

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http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/World/Story/A1Story20130520-423910.html

A 48-year-old divorced Briton locked in a bitter custody battle confessed on Sunday that he had killed his two young children by slitting their throats near the eastern French city of Lyon.

The bodies of a five-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy were discovered on Saturday afternoon in the man's apartment in Saint-Priest, a south-eastern suburb of Lyon.

The unemployed father confessed to the gruesome crime "but did not go into details of the motive", prosecutors said.

The tragedy was "linked to a bitter separation" and "the state of his visitation rights which he considered insufficient", another judicial source told AFP.

He was arrested on Saturday evening in Lyon and placed in custody. A judicial official said a knife which is thought to have been the murder weapon had been found.

The man had visitation rights but only in the presence of another person, the official said, adding that this was the first time he had brought the children home to his apartment on the second floor of a four-storey building without a third party being present.

Several witnesses said the man fled on roller skates after his former wife encountered him on the stairwell of the building and saw him with bloodstained clothes. She immediately alerted the police.

A neighbour said the mother was soon joined by relatives, including her brother-in-law and the children's grandparents, and was lucid although in shock.

A psychiatrist from the emergency services was immediately dispatched to give her counselling.

Ahmed Benguedda, a neighbour, told AFP the couple had divorced "two or three years ago" and that the man had drinking problems and was a wife beater.