Boy dies after father put him in washing machine

A THREE-year-old French boy has died after his father apparently shut him in a washing machine and switched it on, police said.

Christophe Champenois, 33, subjected the toddler to the appalling ordeal on Friday as a “punishment” for misbehaving at nursery school, officers said.

The child, named Bastien – described by neighbours as an angelic little boy – is said to have thrown a drawing by a classmate down a toilet earlier that day.

Once at home, Champenois forced the child naked into the washing machine and let it run for “several minutes”.

The boy’s mother, Charlene, 25, rescued her son and took him to a neighbour, claiming he had fallen down the stairs.

The neighbour in the Paris suburb of Meaux told French daily paper Le Parisien: “I picked him up and his limbs were as loose as a rag doll.

“I felt his heart beat for the last time and then he died.”

The boy’s sister, Maud, five, later told neighbours her father had abused her brother repeatedly, once locking him in a cupboard for two hours.

The boy’s grandmother, Evelyn, said: “His father didn’t want him. On the day he was born, his father was out drinking and when I told him he had a son, he said that he wasn’t interested.”

A local police spokesman said: “A 33-year-old man has been arrested for murder of a minor. The man’s wife has also been arrested for non-assistance of a person in danger.”