{"id":644498,"date":"2026-05-03T05:28:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T05:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/644498\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T05:28:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T05:28:28","slug":"father-charged-with-killing-young-son-daughter-who-were-found-in-vehicle-in-calgary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/644498\/","title":{"rendered":"Father charged with killing young son, daughter who were found in vehicle in Calgary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A vehicle in which two children were found dead is towed away from the scene of the police investigation in Calgary on Thursday.Dayne Patterson\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Police laid murder charges Friday against a Calgary father a day after he phoned them from a parked SUV to announce he had killed his five-year-old boy and three-year-old girl.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe accused contacted 911 and stated that he had killed his children and gave his location,\u201d Staff Sgt. Mark Rahn told reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was directed on the call to place the keys for his vehicle on the hood of his car, and that\u2019s where our officers found him.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the 37-year-old man was co-operative as he taken into custody, and the bodies of the children were taken out of the back of the black SUV in the northwest neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

The father was later charged with two counts of first-degree murder.<\/p>\n

Rahn said he couldn\u2019t explain a possible motive for the killings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think any of you would be satisfied with any kind of answer I could potentially give.\u201d<\/p>\n

The accused appeared in court Friday and is set to be back before a judge Monday for a bail hearing. A publication ban prevents identifying the victims.<\/p>\n

The arrest appears to be a final, sad chapter in a saga between two estranged parents.<\/p>\n

Rahn said the mother frantically called police Wednesday night to report that the children were missing only to get the tragic news the next day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a devastating and unimaginable loss,\u201d Rahn said.<\/p>\n

He said the couple had been in a secure, common-law relationship but were separated for about a year. They lived apart and shared custody of the children.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not out of the ordinary for him to come and retrieve his kids for a few hours,\u201d Rahn said.<\/p>\n

But there had been domestic problems. Police had previously been called to the home four times, Rahn said, although there was no prior violence toward the children.<\/p>\n

The father picked up the children around dinner time Wednesday and was going to take them out for a few hours, Rahn said.<\/p>\n

But they didn\u2019t return.<\/p>\n

After the mother called police, officers arrived and phoned the accused but he didn\u2019t answer, said Rahn.<\/p>\n

Legally, he said, there was little the officers could do, as there was no formal custody order that had been breached. The officers urged the mother to seek a court order that could give them power to return the children.<\/p>\n

Rahn said investigators learned that the father had driven west \u2014 outside the city \u2014 and it\u2019s believed the children were killed just before midnight.<\/p>\n

The man returned to the city around 8 a.m. and called police at 10 a.m., said Rahn.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the mother went to her place of comfort, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo St. Michael Church in central Calgary, where she and her husband were parishioners.<\/p>\n

Inside the church, the woman wept in waves as others embraced and tried to comfort her.<\/p>\n

Father Goitom Mengesha said he went to the woman\u2019s home to support her as soon as he learned about the deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was shocked, she wasn\u2019t able to speak, she was unable to cry,\u201d said Mengesha, speaking through an interpreter in Tigrinya, a language spoken mainly in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then we brought her here today. This is where we always gather with any funeral or [when] anything happens, so this is where we support each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adanech Sahilie, executive director for the Immigrant Outreach Society, called it a \u201cnightmare for the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one expected such a horrible news, and it\u2019s really hard for the mom,\u201d said Sahilie.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe doesn\u2019t have any family members in Canada. She raised them alone and [is now] having this nightmare.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how she\u2019s going to bear it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A vehicle in which two children were found dead is towed away from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[17568,49,2798,48],"class_list":["post-644498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-advblackout","tag-ca","tag-calgary","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}