An 8-year-old girl and 41-year-old twin sisters are dead after a group of five jumped in unison from a seventh-floor apartment balcony. There is a resort town on the banks of a lake.
Police say the family living in the apartment was French nationals. In the early hours of Thursday morning, police were unable to enter the home because one of the children was being homeschooled.
The family appears to have jumped off the balcony.
According to a statement from police, two officers knocked at the door to execute an arrest warrant issued by the prefecture in connection with the home schooling of a child. The mandate was for the father, a 40-year-old Frenchman.
The gendarmes knocked on the door and heard a voice asking who was there. They left the premises because they couldn't get in touch with the potential occupants. In the meantime, a witness called the police to report that people had fallen from the balcony.
The group seems to have thrown themselves into the void from an apartment, landing hard on the pavement below.
Four people were pronounced dead at the scene: an 8-year-old girl, the child's mother and father, and the mom's twin sister. A 15-year-old boy is in a grave condition at a local hospital after potentially catastrophic injuries.
The jumpers were not wearing shoes, according to witnesses.
A family of five, a husband and wife in their 40s, two children, and a grandmother, moved into a flat on the seventh floor three years ago. The twin sister of the wife wasn't registered as a resident there.
Claude Rouiller, who lives nearby, told Le Temps newspaper that the father never said hello in the hallway and ordered many packages. He said that a strong smell of incense had been coming from under the apartment door.
The paper was told that many people in the building thought the family belonged to a cult.
Many of the residents heard the sound of impact as the bodies hit the ground, which led police to refer to the incident as a group jump.
The apartment is being searched by forensic police for clues about what led to the tragedy. The residents of the apartment shared theories and photos on the group.
I got out of the shower and heard a noise, I thought it was a bad film.
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