TEMPE, AZ – A Tempe, Arizona mother is alleged to have horrifically murdered her two children with a meat cleaver this past weekend after obeying “voices” that commanded her to do it, according to police officials.
Yui Inoue, 40, has been reportedly charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her two children – a boy, age 7, and girl, age 9 – early Saturday morning. Tempe Police had responded earlier that morning to a domestic disturbance between Inoue and her husband – who are in the midst of a divorce – but determined that there was no immediate threat to anyone in the dwelling, including the children who were sleeping at the time.
The husband would end up leaving the apartment to sleep in his car in the parking lot of a nearby bank after Inoue threatened to stab him, officials say, over a money dispute involving her impending move to Japan; he was not at home at the time of the murders.
Later that morning, Inoue – covered with blood and lacerations – drove to a police station on Apache and McClintock Drive and made contact with an officer there, initially telling him that she had worked up at 4:30 a.m. with blood-covered hands and had discovered her children dead outside of her bedroom.
“She did not believe that she had killed the children, but said that she could not remember,” police said, although later Inoue – who mainly speaks Japanese and required an interpreter – would admit to allegedly hearing voices telling her to kill her children.
Police say they discovered blood stains, bloody clothes, and a meat clever with a 6-inch blade in Inoue’s vehicle. Officers were then dispatched to her apartment, where they discovered the grisly sight of her two children, covered with a blanket; upon examination, both had “significant injuries” to their bodies, including lacerations, cuts and amputations “consistent with a violent attack and defensive wounds.” Officials say evidence suggests that they meat cleaver discovered in Inoue’s vehicle was the murder weapon.
The officers who responded to the call will receive counseling, according to Tempe Police spokesman Sgt. Steven Carbajal.
“A lot of the officers on that call have children, and even the ones that don’t, we see a lot of tragedy over the course of our career. But you can’t prepare yourself for something like that,” he said. “The aftermath is really one of the hardest things to deal with.”
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