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DRUMMONDVILLE, Que. – The father of three young children found dead in Drummondville held a press conference Tuesday afternoon near the family business in Ste-Christine, Que., northeast of Montreal.

Patrick Desautels briefly thanked everyone for their support but made no further comment about the investigation.

At the end of an acrimonious custody battle that had dragged on for more than two years, Sonia Blanchette was told in June that she could only see her children every second Sunday.

The children’s maternal grandmother was required to be present when Blanchette was with her children: daughters Laurélie, 5, and Anaïs, 2, and her son, Loïc, 4.

But this past Sunday, something went horribly wrong. Someone called ambulance technicians to Blanchette’s duplex on Turcotte St. just before 4 p.m.

When police entered the home, they discovered the bodies of the three children.

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Blanchette, 33, who police say is an “important witness” in the case, was taken from the home and spent Sunday night in a hospital.

Autopsies on the three victims were being conducted on Monday. The results should be available Tuesday, police said.

The Sûreté du Québec said its investigators were still waiting for doctors to give them the go-ahead to question Blanchette.

As of 9 a.m. Tuesday, the mother “still has to be met by investigators,” Sgt. Daniel Thibaudeau said.

He added that he had no fresh information to report on the case.

It remained unclear whether Blanchette was alone with the children in the house when they died.

However, a woman who lives across the street from Blanchette said when she looked out of her window Sunday afternoon, she saw the children’s grandmother standing on the second-floor balcony with her head buried in her hands.

“She was very upset,” said the neighbour, who spoke on condition that her name not be published. “She was waiting for the ambulances to arrive.”

The neighbour said she knew very little about the mother, but she was aware that Blanchette had allegedly abducted one of her children.

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“We read about it in the local paper,” she said.

Outside the mother’s duplex, a woman named Nancy Latraverse left flowers and a note to the three siblings that read: “Rest in peace dear little angels.”

“She’s a good person,” Latraverse told reporters.

“She’s a kind girl. She loved her children. I never would have thought she would do this. It’s a shock to everyone.”

Latraverse said she collapsed when she heard the news.

“I started to cry. I asked myself Why? Why? We don’t know. You can’t imagine that things like that can happen.”

Other neighbours said Blanchette kept to herself and rarely spoke to them.

Until a few months ago, she worked as a cook in a Greek restaurant just a few blocks from her home. Staff at the restaurant refused to talk about her on Monday.

The children’s father, Patrick Desautels, released a statement to the media Monday, saying “the acts committed are inexplicable.”

Desautels said he loved his children deeply and will miss them for the rest of his life. He is scheduled to speak to reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

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Although Desautels was too distraught Monday to speak about his strained relationship with Blanchette, people who know the couple say they had frequent custody battles, which appear to have begun before the birth of the youngest child, Anaïs.

The family home on Turcotte St. is in a quiet community roughly halfway between Montreal and Quebec City.

A postman who delivers mail on the street said: “It was very difficult to deliver mail there this morning.

“I have two kids of my own,” he said.

Gilles Tremblay, a professor and researcher at Université Laval’s centre on family violence and violence against women, who headed a 12-member panel that was assigned to examine several recent tragedies involving Quebec parents killing their children, said it was too early to comment on what happened in Drummondville on Sunday.

When the panel’s findings were released on Nov. 22, Tremblay said it would be utopian to imagine government measures alone can prevent every family crisis in Quebec from spinning out of control.

He reiterated that point again on Monday.

“When it involves several factors accumulating, a situation involving separation, for example, which involves conflict, a debate over custody of children, and one of the people involved becomes more and more irritable, has tendencies to isolate themselves, or show other signs, we can say: ‘Whoops, maybe that person is about to unravel,'” Tremblay said.

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“In that sense, we are better to get closer to that person. If everyone had that reflex, we’d have a better chance of preventing such dreadful situations.”

The Canadian Press contributed to this report