A 66-YEAR-OLD man shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself on Tuesday night, National Police inform.

The couple were going through a divorce at the time, say friends of the family.

Their bodies were discovered in the basement of their Cartagena home by their 17-year-old son. He had entered the property via the lower ground floor as the front door was locked, which the young man said was uncharacteristic of his parents.

His mother, 48, was lying on the floor with a shot-wound to the stomach and the shoulder whilst his father was discovered nearby having shot himself in the face.

The mother, a lottery-ticket seller, had wanted to end the marriage some two or three years before, but her taxi-driver husband wanted to stay, say sources from the Murcia regional government.

A friend of the woman said she was concerned about leaving him ‘out on the street’.

Neighbours say they were ‘good, kind people’ and that they ‘did not expect anything like this’.