Cairns deaths: Mother Charged with Murder of Eight Children Found Dead at her Home 

 

An Australian woman who was found with eight dead children at her home in Cairns has been charged with murder.

Mersane Warria, 37, was charged with eight counts of murder on Sunday for the death of seven of her children and her niece.
She was charged in a bedside hearing at a hospital in Cairns, where she is under police guard and recovering from stab wounds, Queensland state police said.
Police discovered the bodies of Warria’s seven children, three girls aged two, 11, 12, and four boys aged five, six, eight and nine, and the body of her 14-year-old niece, after they were called to her home in the Cairns suburb of Manoora on Friday.

Police had received a report of a woman with serious injuries, and Warria was found in the house suffering from stab wounds to the chest and neck.
It is understood that children, who have not been named, were found by their 20-year-old brother when he returned home on Friday morning.


It has not been confirmed how the children died, though reports have suggested they were stabbed to death.
Queensland Police Detective Inspector Bruno Asnicar said officers are examining several knives in the home that could have been the murder weapon, but added that suffocation was also a possible cause of death.
“We are considering that and that’s why it’s taking a bit of time,” he said. “It could be a range of things, from suffocation to a thousand other things.”- culled