SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- A 69-year-old man suspected of hacking his two grandchildren and wife to death with an ax and badly wounding his daughter has been arrested, police said Monday.
Police were questioning the suspect late Monday, hours after the attack in Cowra, 155 miles west of Sydney, a police statement said. He was not immediately charged.
Authorities earlier had identified the man as John Walsh and had released photographs to allow the public to help find him.
He was arrested without incident about six hours after paramedics were called to the house where the bodies were found, the police statement said. The suspect was at a motel in the town of Hay, about 260 miles west of Cowra.
Cowra Mayor Bruce Miller said the children were aged 7 and 5. Their mother, Shelley Walsh, was a police officer who worked in a nearby town.
Walsh was attacked as she returned to the house and was able to flee to neighbor Terry Lovett's home, bleeding from a deep gash on the side of her head, Lovett told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Walsh 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 while their mother went to work in a nearby town.
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This is terrible. This is the kind of thing that will tear a family to pieces.
Police were questioning the suspect late Monday, hours after the attack in Cowra, 155 miles west of Sydney, a police statement said. He was not immediately charged.
Authorities earlier had identified the man as John Walsh and had released photographs to allow the public to help find him.
He was arrested without incident about six hours after paramedics were called to the house where the bodies were found, the police statement said. The suspect was at a motel in the town of Hay, about 260 miles west of Cowra.
Cowra Mayor Bruce Miller said the children were aged 7 and 5. Their mother, Shelley Walsh, was a police officer who worked in a nearby town.
Walsh was attacked as she returned to the house and was able to flee to neighbor Terry Lovett's home, bleeding from a deep gash on the side of her head, Lovett told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Walsh 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 while their mother went to work in a nearby town.
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This is terrible. This is the kind of thing that will tear a family to pieces.
