'Axe killing' grandfather held after two grandchildren and wife discovered hacked to death - News - Evening Standard
       

'Axe killing' grandfather held after two grandchildren and wife discovered hacked to death

Arrested: John Walsh is being questioned by detectives

A Grandfather suspected of hacking his two grandchildren and wife to death with an axe and badly wounding his daughter has been arrested, police said today.

Police were questioning the suspect late Monday, hours after the attack in Cowra, 155 miles west of Sydney, detectives said in a statement.

The man had earlier been identified as John Walsh and photographs were released  to allow the public to help find him.

Walsh was arrested without incident 258 miles west of Cowra at a motel in the town of Hay, the police statement said.

He was not immediately charged.

Police thanked the public for their assistance but did not say how they had been alerted to his whereabouts.

Paramedics were called to the Cowra house and found three bodies, including the children, said New South Wales state Ambulance Service spokeswoman Fiona Kruit.

The suspect was arrested about six hours later, the police statement said.

Cowra Mayor Bruce Miller said the children were aged 7 and 5, and their mother, Shelley Walsh, was a police officer who worked in a nearby town.

She was attacked as she returned to the house, and fled to a neighbor's home bleeding from a deep gash on the side of her head, Terry Lovett, whose house the woman fled to, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

She was later flown to a Sydney hospital in serious condition, the police statement said.

Lovett said the elderly man and his wife often looked after the children when their mother went to work.

The police statement said the dead wife was 52-years-old.

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