Man shot dead by police after killing sisters

A US man fatally stabbed his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his five-year-old sister in front of a police officer and then turned toward his nine-year-old sister with a knife in his hand before officers shot him dead in what their chief described as “a killing field”.

There was no clear motive for the events that unfolded in a Boston suburb the day after the five-year-old’s birthday.

But there was no doubt about the carnage wrought by 23-year-old Kerby Revelus against his sisters in the family home they shared with their parents and grandmother.

Five-year-old Bianca was killed as a cake for her birthday, which investigators believe was on Friday, sat on the kitchen table.

Nine-year-old Sarafina dialed 911 and watched police shoot her brother as her elder sister, 17-year-old Samantha, lay dead on the floor.

Sarafina was taken to hospital yesterday with defensive wounds to her hands and stab wounds in her abdomen and one of her legs, police said.

“In policing, we see the raw human emotion every day, but to think that a human being could afflict such an atrocious, violent act on his own family is unbelievable,” Milton police Chief Richard G. Wells Jr said.

“When I walked up to the first officer (on the scene), I could see the whole story right in his face. This just told me that this was something very bad.”

The attack came about 24 hours after Revelus had got into a fistfight with a man living next door, Mr Wells said.

“Blows were exchanged,” he said. “I don’t know the cause of it, but we’re confident that did happen. He had been agitated in the hours that followed that, going into the day and last night.”

Investigators believe Revelus targeted Samantha, a senior at Milton High School, and fatally stabbed her with a household knife while their grandmother, who neighbours say lives on the first floor, was doing laundry in the basement.

The children’s parents were away; their mother, identified by friends as Regine Revelus, is a nurse at a Boston hospital, Mr Wells said.

Revelus had recently served jail time on a gun charge, Wells said, but the details would not be released until courts opened today.