Friends of a man suspected of stabbing his wife and two young children to death described them last night as “almost the perfect family”.
The man, named as Damian Rzeszowski, has been arrested over six deaths in St Helier, Jersey, on Sunday. The other victims are thought to include his father-in- law, his wife’s friend and her daughter.
At a Mass in St Martin near Jersey’s capital, family friend Jakub Bartus (35) named Rzeszowski’s wife as Izabela Rzeszowski.
Detectives are waiting to question Rzeszowski in hospital.
Neighbours said yesterday they fended off the “mumbling” attacker with a traffic cone before he turned his knife on himself.
The attack spilled from a flat and into the street yesterday afternoon. One local said the suspect had been rowing with his wife recently and tried to take an overdose last month.
Another resident in the same block of flats said he saw a man chasing a woman with a knife before stabbing himself in the chest.
Bryan Ogesa (24) said he and his two friends used a traffic cone to try to defend themselves as the man then came towards them. As he ran away, he saw the body of another man lying in the doorway of the flat with a knife sticking out of his back.
Mr Ogesa, who ran outside after hearing screaming, said: “A man was chasing a woman with a knife. It was quite long.”
He said he first saw another woman lying on the ground and had gone to help her as he thought she had simply fallen over.
“She was responsive, but just mumbling,” he said. “That’s when the guy started coming towards us. He was mumbling as well.”
Another man said he had been in his garden and ran to the scene after hearing a woman scream.
Mike Bowron, chief officer for Jersey Police, called for local communities to remain “dignified and calm”. He said all the victims were from Poland and four were from the same family.
“Jersey is an incredibly safe place, one of the safest in the western world, and incidents of this nature are exceptionally rare,” he said in a statement.
“It makes such a tragedy even more difficult for people to come to terms with, and no one could fail to be affected by the events that unfolded here yesterday.”
One local said he saw a woman’s body on the ground covered in blood and then watched as paramedics carried the bodies of two little girls out of the flat.
“I’ve never seen so much blood,” he said. “They were completely limp. The paramedics were crying. They were completely drenched in blood, one of the paramedics had to change his clothes.”
He said the girls were blonde and were wearing dresses. He guessed their ages as being about eight or nine and two or three.
Five people were initially confirmed dead but a sixth victim, a woman, was later also pronounced dead at Jersey General Hospital.