A three-year-old boy died and a 45-year-old man was in a critical condition following a stabbing incident in Sydney, the New South Wales (NSW) Police Force said in a statement on Thursday.
At about 4 p.m. on Wednesday, emergency services were called to a unit complex on Washington Avenue, Riverwood, following reports of a concern for welfare, Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying.
Police officers found that the toddler deceased inside the unit, and the man with serious injuries.
NSW ambulance paramedics treated the man at the scene, and he was taken to a hospital in a critical condition.
A crime scene has been established.
At a press conference, NSW Police Force Superintendent Sheridan Waldau told reporters that the man has undergone surgery at the hospital and now remains in stable condition.
Waldau noted that a female resident within the unit called the Triple Zero.
Police believed that the woman lives in the unit by herself and is a family member of the man, but she is not the child’s mother.
“We understand that his mother passed away a few years ago,” said Waldau.
She also revealed that the attack on the child appeared to be a domestic violence-related incident.
“Unfortunately, police attend domestic violence incidents all the time. We attend 140,000 incidents every year and some of them end up in homicides. It’s one of the jobs that we as police always hate going to. It’s the worst job involving a child,” Waldau added.
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