Lankan parents arrested after children knifed to death in UK

David HARRISON and Vikki MILLER

UK: Two children aged four and five were stabbed to death in their family home and their six-month-old baby sister is critically ill in hospital with knife wounds, police said.

The children’s mother, Sasikala Navaneethan, 35, and father Navarajah, 39, from Sri Lanka, were arrested and were being questioned by detectives at separate police stations.

Police refused to give details of the incident, in the middle-class suburb of Carshalton, South London, but sources suggested that the throats of the five-year-old boy and four-year-old girl had been cut.

The attacks are understood to have taken place around the time that Navaneethan, who owns a newsagent’s and grocery store in nearby Coulsdon, returned home late on Friday.

As well-wishers laid flowers outside the four-bedroom house in Park Lane on Saturday, neighbours described the “chaotic scenes”.

They said the victims were “sweet children” who had enjoyed riding their bicycles in their garden. Jim Duffy, 55, a neighbour, 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. She was calm, no screaming or shouting.

“About half an hour later a man came out. He was quite calm, too. The police didn’t handcuff him at first and he sat in the front of the police van making calls on his mobile phone. 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 father Navarajah was later freed without charges.

The children were taken to hospital and pronounced dead shortly before 11pm.

Another neighbour, Pam Thomas, 68, said: “When we heard the sirens I looked out and I saw a paramedic carrying a baby scooped up in his arms. Then a child’s body that looked lifeless and limp.

“Then they brought out a bigger child in a white blanket and they had oxygen and they were pumping its chest.”

Thomas said the couple had moved into the house just before Christmas.

Dhruba Sengupta, 66, a retired forensic laboratory technician, who lives opposite, said:

“This is all very shocking. I have been living here for 21 years and have never known anything like this.”

A group of Sri Lankan friends or relatives came to the house after the police arrived, he said. “They said they had lived in the house with the couple but moved out because of problems. The police came out and spoke to them and then they started screaming and crying.”

The pounds 300,000 house was taped off on Sunday as forensic teams searched inside.

John Bailey, 22, a salesman staying three doors away, said: “It was manic. At 10.30pm, about 10 police cars came screeching to a halt outside the house.

“About six policemen were running up and down the road. They didn’t seem to know what house they had been called to. Then an Asian-looking man came out of the house and walked slowly to the end of the drive. Then the police knew which one it was and ran inside.”

He said that the man “didn’t show any emotion whatsoever and his expression didn’t change the whole time”.

Carol Bradley, 60, who lives next door, said: “This is so awful. The children were so sweet. They were always riding their bikes up and down in the garden and they would come up and talk to me.”

Neighbours said the couple were thought to be from Sri Lanka. Tony Silverstein, 62, who runs a kitchens and bathroom store in Coulsdon, near Navaneethan’s shop, Best Save Food and Wine, said: “I can’t believe this happened. I knew the husband well. He was a lovely, helpful bloke.

“We used to call him Smiley because he always seemed happy and liked to have a laugh and a joke. The kids would be running around the shop while the wife carried the baby.

“She was very offish, and would serve you with a grunt. He was much friendlier.”

Stab baby ‘critical but stable’

A six-month-old girl badly injured when her young brother and sister were stabbed to death has undergone surgery in hospital.

The five-year-old boy, girl aged four and the six-month-old, were found with stab wounds at a house in Carshalton, south London on Friday night. Officers described the girl’s condition as ‘critical but stable’.