A teenager has been arrested in northwest France after he allegedly stabbed his father to death and broadcasted the killing on social media.
The incident occurred on Saturday in the small town of Ploeren, when the 17-year-old boy visited his father, 46, at the family house, where he had been living alone for several weeks.
The teenager, who visited the house after getting drunk at a party nearby, allegedly went into the kitchen and picked up two knives, before waking up his father and stabbing him several times.
He then called the police at around 11:30 p.m. and told them that he had "deliberately killed his father with several stab wounds," according to a statement obtained by AFP on Monday from François Touron, the Vannes public prosecutor.
An autopsy performed over the weekend confirmed that the 46-year old died "as a result of massive bleeding following multiple injuries from sharp weapons," the prosecutor said.
Touron said that as soon as the boy killed his father, the teenager broadcasted a "video of the crime scene on social networks to 40 recipients."
The police are currently working on taking the video down from social network sites, while a support group has been set up for the recipients of the videos and their parents.
The teenager said that he killed him "to put an end to the aggressive and violent behavior of his father against the background of alcoholic problems and the suffering that this behavior caused his family," according to Touron.
The boy's mother filed a criminal complaint against the father last month after an alleged domestic violence incident. The rest of the family moved out of the residence following the incident, while the gendarmerie, the French military police, opened an investigation against him on May 12.
The teenager was charged by a magistrate in nearby Lorient on Monday for "intentional homicide on a legitimate or natural ascendant" and "dissemination of images relating to the commission of an offense of willful attack on the integrity of the nobody," according to prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger, who spoke to AFP.
Kellenberger said that the teenager will remain in custody. The case was handed over to the Lorient authorities by local police.
Newsweek has contacted the Vannes public prosecutor's office and the Lorient authorities for comment.
