Zagreb police said on Saturday they had never intervened in the family in which three underage children were killed last night, of which their father, an Austrian national, is suspected.

Officer Nikolina Grubišić Požar said that upon arriving on the scene at a flat in the Mlinovi neighbourhood, police found a man in a poor state and three children who gave no signs of life.

A doctor who arrived on the scene confirmed they died a violent death, while the man was hospitalised and an investigation is under way, she added.

The Zagreb County Prosecutor’s Office said earlier that an Austrian national born in 1965 was suspected of the murders.

Earlier today Zagreb police said they found the man in the flat around 2 am after being informed that he announced on social media that he would commit suicide.

The media reported that Harald Kopitz of Vienna, who lives and works in Zagreb as a financial consultant for a number of big companies, is suspected of murdering his three children. They added that the mother works in a hotel in Dubrovnik and that the children were spending the weekend with the father.

Social welfare centre had no information about domestic violence

The state secretary at the family and social policy ministry, Margareta Mađerić, said the relevant social welfare centre had no information about domestic violence in the family concerned.

She told the press the centre “has not received even one complaint, either from individuals, the mother or any other bodies, which would point to domestic violence against the children or the mother.”

She said that during 2018 the family attended mandatory counselling at the centre, which is standard procedure for families going through a divorce, and that the parents agreed to joint custody of their three children.

Mađerić said she was horrified by the murder of three small children, calling it totally incomprehensible.

The director of the hospital where the father is being treated, Davor Vagić, said the patient was stable and that he was being tested for the presence of psychotropic medication.