A man and his baby were discovered dead on Sunday evening at their home in Vivier-au-Court, in the Ardennes.
They were probably killed by guns, the prosecution said.
According to the first elements, it could be a question of a murder followed by a suicide.
“Around 9:30 pm a woman in distress went out into the street indicating that at her home, her husband and a child were dead,” explained Laurent de Caigny, the public prosecutor of Charleville-Mézières.
"The Sedan gendarmes discovered two bodies, that of a man and that of a very young child, who died violently in the woman's home".
According to a source close to the investigation, the deceased child would be a little girl aged "just under a year".
"The gendarmes from the research section of Reims were called in to take charge of the investigation," the prosecutor told Radio 8 FM.
The murder before suicide thesis
The young woman, who was evacuated to the hospital in a state of shock, told the gendarmes that "her husband had killed the child before committing suicide".
The forensic pathologist and criminal identification technicians found that the baby's death "could have been the result of gunfire", while "the adult's body presented massive lesions that may correspond to an autolytic gesture [of destruction of tissue, Editor's note] by firearm, ”explained the prosecutor.
“Emergency” autopsies are scheduled for Monday morning.
The findings of the gendarmerie "will have to establish, in addition to the certain identity of the deceased, what were the difficulties that this family was going through, which at this time seemed unknown to the gendarmerie", concluded Laurent de Caigny.
According to Radio 8 FM, the man is 35 years old.
Two other children, born from a previous union and aged 6 and 8, have been sheltered with neighbors.