Police suspect that the man killed his partner and their son before he took his own life.
“The man is suspected of having killed his partner and their son,” police spokesperson Calle Persson told news agency TT.
Police in Malmö were called to a house in Husie at 4.15pm to investigate reports of a man in a poor condition.
“We were called by a person with connections to the family,” Persson said.
Several police units were sent to the house and they found the couple dead on arrival. The child was alive however and was rushed to hospital, where he later died.
According to the police, the man and the woman were in their forties and their son was under 10-years-old.
Police were unwilling to reveal the weapon used or any further details as some family members have not yet been informed. The motive has not yet been established.
“But initial reports indicate that he was feeling psychologically unstable,” Persson said.
Michael Rying, a criminologist at Mid Sweden University in Sundsvall, says that in such incidents it is most commonly the man who kills women and children.
The underlying causes are often that the man is mentally ill or that the woman has said that she will leave him.
“Then he takes his family with him as part of his suicide,” said Michael Rying.
Rying said that in the rare cases that the woman is the perpetrator then they usually kill their children or their husband – but not both.