Peter killed his 9 and 11 year old sons and his wife before committing suicide

Peter, a 50-year-old police officer, initially took his 11-year-old daughter and her 9-year-old son to the family home, then shot and killed his 40-year-old wife, Dominique, the owner of the cafe. He would have shot her in the head, finally.

Police were called to the cafe in question around midnight for a gunfight and found the lifeless woman's body next to her severely injured husband. Both had gunshot wounds. The investigators then found the children's bodies in the family home.

An investigating judge was assigned to examine the case in collaboration with the local criminal police in the Minos area. The prosecution, a coroner and the lab also visited the site. The seriously injured man died in the course of the night.

The suspect and his wife quarreled during the day of Wednesday while they were in Overijse to support the local hall on the occasion of the Brabant Arrow. According to the Gazet van Antwerpen, the altercation took on huge proportions at night

He was not allowed to carry his service weapon

The killer was not allowed to carry his service gun home, local police said. The investigation must, however, still determine whether it is his service weapon that the man used against his family.

Police in Antwerp do not have automatic permission to take their service gun home after work, police said on Thursday. "This requires the green light of the body psychologist, the internal monitoring service and the trainers in charge of weapons training," said spokesman Willem Migom. "So it's the head of the body that decides. Anyone carrying their service weapon without authorization runs the risk of being disciplined."

If barriers exist, therefore, a priori, it is not easy to control compliance with these authorizations, "given the fragmentation of hours of service and shifts."

It is not yet certain that additional security measures will be taken within the Antwerp police. "The investigation must first determine what happened precisely" in Wijnegem "and whether it is his service weapon that the agent used," one tells local police.