A sixteen-year-old boy who confessed on Saturday evening to stabbing his 46-year-old mother and his six-year-old sister at home has been placed in a closed institution by the Belgian juvenile judge. After his act, he set their home on fire.
The victims were discovered on Friday after a fire in their home in Haasrode, just south of Leuven. Emergency services found the two after the fire was brought under control. The 46-year-old woman was already dead. Her six-year-old daughter was resuscitated on the spot but died shortly afterward.
Little is known about the boy’s motive. The sixteen-year-old did make a confession on Saturday evening, but his statement was hardly usable, says a spokesperson for the Leuven prosecutor’s office to, among others, Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN). “The matter must be further investigated. What exactly was going on in his head still needs to be clarified.”
According to Belgian media, it concerns a Ukrainian family from Lviv. The mother, her son, and youngest daughter fled to Belgium after the Russian invasion. The eldest daughter of the family, 20-year-old Alina, went to Ireland. According to her, father Ivan would be fighting at the front in Ukraine.
The twenty-year-old is in the dark about her brother’s motive, she tells HLN. Her brother also allegedly killed the family’s dog – Labrador Nicole. “I can’t grasp it,” she concludes her conversation with the newspaper.
The autopsy will take place on the bodies of the mother and her youngest daughter on Tuesday, reports the Leuven prosecutor’s office.