Mystery Shrouds Basta Crime: Doubts Son Killed his Mother, 5 Siblings
A mother and her six children were found dead Sunday evening inside their house at Omar bin al-Khattab Street in the Beirut neighborhood of Basta, state-run National News Agency reported.
Nawal Younes 55, Hadi 25, Ameen 23, Maha 20, Manal 18, Zahraa and Zahra 15 were all shot dead at their home while the father was away.
Ali al-Amin al-Hajj Dib, the father, returned from his hometown in Aramta in the Jezzine district with his two daughters, where he visited his parents, and then he went out to his bakery to return an hour and a half later to find his wife and 6 children murdered.
According to preliminary information, the eldest brother Hadi had killed his mother and five siblings before committing suicide with an automatic hunting rifle.
Media reports claimed that Hadi had some kind of disability and might suffer from autism.
However, the Lebanese Autism Society ruled out in a statement on Monday these claims saying that the man who committed the crime couldn't be suffering from autism.
“Disability has never been a reason to commit such crimes,” the statement said.
It noted that “an autistic person doesn’t have the ability to use the type of rifles used in the murder. Furthermore, an autistic person can’t commit suicide.”
As Safir newspaper reported on Monday that the wounds of the eldest son, Hadi were in the mouth and his body was found in a room next to the murder scene.
An eye witness told the daily that he saw the janitor leave his room after he was informed that a murder happened in the building, noting that “one of the mother’s siblings had a heart attack after seeing the bodies.”
Another relative of the murdered woman entered the building at around 12:00 am Monday shouting that he had “important information, which happened a few days before the crime.”
He was immediately called by the security forces to take his testimony.
Security sources remarked that the gun shots were not heard by the neighbors.
“The neighbors denied hearing any got shots, stressing they only heard the sound of a door being slammed roughly,” sources told the newspaper.
The NNA reported that “Beirut police Chief Ahmed Hnaini and forensics arrived at the crime scene to identify the circumstances."
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