T

he National Police said a policeman stationed at the Melawi Police Station in West Kalimantan had killed and mutilated his two children on Friday at a police dormitory complex.

National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said that investigators suspected that the man in question, Brig. Petrus Bakus, may have a mental illness that caused him to appear as if he was '€œpossessed'€, something that had not been detected when he first applied to the police force.

'€œThe assailant may have had a mental illness for the past four years, but it had remained undetected by the police force,'€ he said at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta.

The police said that Petrus killed his two children, four-year-old Fabian and three-year-old Amora, at midnight as his wife slept. Law enforcement officers found that the two children had been cut into several pieces.

After he finished with the children, Petrus approached his wife holding a bloodied chopping knife and is alleged to have threatened to kill her. However, she managed to escape.

'€œHis wife was also going to be killed but she asked her husband to bring her a glass of water before he killed her and, when he did, she escaped and was helped by locals,'€ Badrodin said, adding that Petrus'€™ wife had confessed that the assailant had been acting strangely for the past couple of days.

Meanwhile, West Kalimantan Police spokesman Adj. Sr. Comr. Arianto said that Petrus may have suffered from schizophrenia.

'€œHis wife said that he had experienced hallucinations and had been babbling incoherently for the past week,'€ Arianto was quoted by kompas.com as saying.

Petrus admitted to mutilating Fabian and Amora in his room at the Melawi Police dormitory and was promptly detained.

When entering the room, investigators discovered Fabian'€™s body had a wound to the neck and was missing one arm, while his sister Amora'€™s body appeared to be missing both arms and legs.

Petrus might have planned to kill his wife, Windri, who was sleeping, Arianto added.

Windri woke up when Petrus had stood over her, allegedly gripping a bloody sword and threatening to kill her. Windri managed to escape harm and sought help from neighbors.

There have been other mutilation cases in the recent years.

On Feb. 12, 2015, a panel of judges at the Siak Sri Indrapura District Court in Siak, Riau, sentenced three defendants in a mutilation case involving seven victims '€”six of them young boys '€” to death. The three defendants were Muhammad Delvi bin Basri Tanjung alias Buyung, 20, Syopian bin Herman Ade, 26, and Dita Desmala Sari binti Suheri, 20. Each victim had been strangled to death, having first been sexually molested by Dita, Delvi'€™s ex-wife. Delvi mutilated the victims'€™ genitals post-mortem.