A 6-year-old boy early Wednesday had been stabbed in his neck, authorities said Thursday.
The county coroner’s office declined to release the boy’s name citing his age and the “domestic event” in which he was slain.
Authorities say the boy’s lifeless body was in a room next to his 26-year-old father who had self-inflicted knife wounds.
No arrests have been made in the case. Investigators spent 10 hours on Wednesday collecting evidence from the apartment where the child was killed.
County sheriff’s deputies found the boy while responding to reports from a woman that she had been sexually assaulted at knifepoint by her domestic partner.
An unharmed 2-year-old boy, another son of the injured man, was found in a separate room in the apartment on the 7500 block of East Harvard Avenue.
The injured man remains hospitalized, the county sheriff’s office said. His identity has not been released.
When authorities first arrived at the scene on the sex assault report, they found the woman with a neighbor. Deputies eventually entered the apartment where the woman said she had been assaulted. It was there they found the slain boy and injured man.
Julie Brooks, a sheriff’s office spokeswoman, said the woman is the mother of the 2-year-old boy, but not related to the slain child.
“Deputies are continuing their investigation into both the reported sexual assault and the homicide,” said Brooks.
She said there is still a “significant amount of investigating to do.”
Meanwhile, Deputy Bill Foreman Jr. remains in critical condition at The Medical Center of Aurora after being injured in a severe crash while heading to the homicide scene.
Authorities by a pickup truck about 6 a.m. on Wednesday near East Iliff Avenue and South Valentia Street.
The 55-year-old deputy had to be extricated from his vehicle. Foreman has been with the department since 1990.
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or @JesseAPaul
