SYDNEY (AFP) — An Australian grandfather was charged in court Tuesday with murdering his wife and two young grandchildren with an axe and attempting to murder his daughter.
The 69-year-old was arrested overnight at a motel hundreds of kilometres from his home in the quiet country town of Cowra about 250 kilometres (155 miles) west of Sydney, where the killings took place.
The bodies of his 52-year-old wife and two grandchildren -- a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl -- were found inside the house on Monday.
His daughter, the children's 31-year-old mother, was wounded in the head but managed to flee the house and raise the alarm.
The woman, a police officer, ran to her neighbour's home, bleeding heavily and screaming: "Dad's just killed mum and the two kids," local media reported.
The grandfather, who appeared in court wearing a white jumpsuit, looked down at his hands for most of the hearing, national radio reported.
He did not apply for bail and will face court again next Monday.
The accused man was arrested after he booked into a motel under his own name at the end of a five-hour drive to the town of Hay.
The owner of the motel, former police officer John Whitehead, told reporters the grey-haired man who walked with a limp appeared "ordinary" and calmly ordered bacon and eggs for his breakfast the next day.
Whitehead said he later realised the man was wanted for a triple murder after watching the news, which carried his name and description, and called the police.
Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione told reporters there was not yet any clear motive behind the murder.
Students and staff at the school attended by the two children killed in the axe attack are receiving trauma counselling.
"They were delightful children who were just lovely, country kids, enjoying life," St Raphael's Central School principal Michael Gallagher told reporters.
Their police officer mother was in hospital with a fractured skull but her injuries were not life threatening, Scipione said.
She was still struggling to come to terms with the tragedy.
"Her world, as she knows it, has turned upside down," he said.
The murders have shocked a nation still reeling from the news that a father killed himself and his three young children after an argument with their mother, his wife.
The 44 year-old man, an 18-month-old boy, five-year-old girl and seven-year-old boy were found dead inside a vehicle on a remote property in New South Wales last Friday.
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