Woman, 29, and 5-year-old daughter killed in Terneuzen incident; Father not a suspect
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The woman and child found killed in an apartment in Terneuzen on Monday evening were a 29-year-old woman and her 5-year-old daughter. The child’s father is “certainly not a suspect” at this time, a police spokesperson told ANP.
The police interviewed the father as a witness. They also interviewed “many family members, acquaintances, and neighbors,” the spokesperson said. The father was not arrested. No one is in custody.
Residents of Vincent van Goghstraat in Terneuzen are devastated. On Tuesday morning, a pile of flowers and stuffed toys lined the apartment building where the mother and girl lived and were killed on Monday.
“I can’t get the image of that girl out of my head,” a young mother told PZC. The killed girl was in her daughter’s class at the primary school De Twijn. She knew the girl well. “A super sweet child. Always happy. Always laughing,” she said, failing to hold back tears. “I keep picturing that girl. The way she laughed.”
She heard the sirens on Monday evening. “I heard them stop nearby. I was busy with the kids, but my boyfriend went to check. He texted who it was. So-and-so from the schoolyard. I was in shock,” the neighbor said. She described the family as perfectly normal. “Usually she was there, but he was there sometimes too. Yeah, just nice people. Nothing strange about them. I never noticed anything wrong with them. Not with their daughter either. Like I said, she was always cheerful.”
“We are saddened by the news that our student and her mother have passed away. It’s surreal that suddenly a chair will remain empty,” said Suzan van den Berg, the director of the primary school and daycare center IKC De Twijn. “We will support our students, their parents, and our staff as best we can in processing their grief.”
Victim support services were made available to students and staff members. The school is also helping to organize a meeting for parents and guardians to discuss the situation later on Tuesday.
The police responded to the scene at around 5:30 p.m. on Monday after receiving a report of a possible shooting. “We went there and found the mother and the child; they were dead,” police spokesperson Alwin Don told Omroep Zeeland. “They are the residents of the house.” He added that “the initial investigation has shown that they died as a result of violence,” but said nothing else.
