Parents arrested after decapitated child found

A couple have been arrested in Texas after the decapitated body of their one-year-old son and the bodies of their two other children were found in their small apartment.

Brownsville police chief Carlos Garcia said the one-year-old was found on a bed. The other two were in plastic bin bags on the floor nearby.

The parents, who were said to be in their 20s, were expected to be charged with murder later today.

Garcia said he did not know whether the children, who were all under five and were all siblings, had been killed in the apartment or elsewhere.

They had apparently been dead since Monday, he said.

And he described a bloody and messy scene in the one-bedroom flat.

“They live in very poor conditions. There’s clothes, trash, all sorts of things thrown all over,” he said.

“Very poor, very trashy... in the worst conditions that anyone could live in in the United States.”

Police did not immediately open the bags, Garcia said, because they were waiting for a search warrant to proceed.

An acquaintance of the couple visited the flat last night and discovered the gruesome scene. They then waved down a police car.

A man came out of the apartment and told the officer, “‘Something happened here last night (Monday),”’ Garcia said.

The police chief added that they had no weapon or motive and were questioning local residents.

About 200 to 300 people gathered on the street outside to watch as a mobile crime lab unit arrived and investigators moved into the flat.

“It tears my heart. I want to cry. How can people do this?” said Nancy Garcia, 46, who lives nearby and said she grew up in the neighbourhood. “There is help out there.”

Juan Hernandez, 39, said he and other neighbours had repeatedly called the police about fights and beatings he heard coming from the apartment.

Earlier yesterday a man was shot dead at a used car dealership in town.

“In the 22 years I have been in this department I don’t think we have had four (murders in one day),” Garcia said.