The Internal Security official in the Syrian governorate of Hama revealed details of the horrific crime that Al-Bayad neighborhood witnessed last Friday, which claimed the lives of five members of one family.
The authorities found the bodies of the family members inside their house on Friday evening in suspicious circumstances, and initial investigations revealed, according to a statement by the Ministry of Interior, that the husband killed his wife and three daughters and then committed suicide.
Brigadier General Mulham Al-Shantout, the head of Internal Security in Hama, explained on Saturday that the initial information gleaned from the investigations and testimonies indicates the existence of previous family disputes, with suspicions that the perpetrator, the father, was subjected to psychological pressures in the recent period.
Al-Shantout indicated, in a statement reported by the Ministry of Interior through its channel on the “Telegram” application and published by the Syrian News Agency “SANA”, that these data “are still being verified and scrutinized within the judicial investigation track.”
He added that the field evidence showed that the perpetrator used a “Kalashnikov” rifle to carry out the crime, and that the distance between him and the victims was very close during the shooting, and traces of gunpowder were found on his hands, which suggests that he fired the shots himself. The forensic analysis confirmed that the projectile used belonged to the rifle used in the incident.
Al-Shantout mentioned that the recordings of the surveillance cameras at the entrance of the house showed that the perpetrator brought the rifle from an adjacent room where he was hiding it, as he appears in the recording carrying the weapon and returning with it inside the house, indicating that these facts are subject to legal evaluation within the course of the investigation.
He pointed out that, according to the forensic medicine report, the death occurred approximately 13 hours before the arrival of the security teams at the crime scene.
Al-Shantout confirmed that investigations are still underway accurately and intensively to uncover all the circumstances surrounding the crime, stressing that citizens will be informed of any developments or official results as soon as they are completed.
In a related context, the newspaper “Al-Watan” stated, quoting sources, that initial investigations revealed that the family members were killed while eating breakfast on Friday morning inside their house.
The sources added that the discovery of the crime was delayed until one of their relatives arrived at the house to check on them, due to their absence and inability to communicate with them since the morning hours.
