A woman whose ten-year-old son was found dead in a suitcase was on Sunday charged with his murder, French prosecutors said on Sunday. The 33-year-old woman had failed to “explain the facts” and had been “evasive” during questioning, local prosecutor Laureline Peyrefitte said in a statement.

A post-mortem showed he was “killed with a bladed weapon, like a knife” and had “received multiple fatal blows to the neck and chest”. Investigators say the boy was likely killed on Wednesday.

His mother is then believed to have moved the body in a suitcase in an attempt to dispose it before returning to the family home in Ferrieres-en-Brie, to the east of Paris, to clean, the statement said.

Authorities later found blood stains at the property. The body of a child inside a suitcase was found on Thursday morning 100 metres (320 feet) from where he lived.

The woman was later arrested at the home of her sister 30 kilometres (18 miles) away in possession of a bloodied knife.