August 15, 2011
LONDON (AFP) - Six people, including three children, were killed on Sunday in a knife attack at an apartment on the Channel Island of Jersey, police said.
A 30-year-old man was arrested in hospital after undergoing surgery for injuries sustained in the incident.
Officers were called to an address in Saint Helier, the island's main city, at around 3:00 pm (1400 GMT) after reports of a multiple stabbing, States of Jersey Police said.
Five people were found dead at the Victoria Crescent address. A sixth person, critically wounded, was taken to Jersey Hospital but died following surgery.
Neighbours were alerted to the emergency when the attack spilled out onto the street, according to police.
The other victims who died were two women and one man, and they were all Jersey residents.
Head of crime services Stewart Gull said: "Clearly this complex investigation is in its very early stages as we try to establish exactly what happened."
Local resident Andre Thorpe said he saw at the scene "police come running out with a child, it was a small child, I just saw the legs. They went off in an ambulance."
Thorpe said he understood that all the victims were from the same family.
The British Crown Dependency of Jersey lies around 14 miles (22 kilometres) off the coast of northern France and is home to around 90,000 people. A third of the population reside in Saint Helier, on the island's south coast.
"Jersey is an incredibly safe island, probably one of the safest places in the western world and incidents of this nature are an extremely rare occurrence," said Gull.
