Story By: James King, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash

An animal loving council worker has been shot dead in a clash with police after stabbing his girlfriend and two of her three girls to death.

The shocking incident that left the woman who was a surfing teacher and her two daughters dead and her third daughter injured happened in the Brazilian resort city of Caraguatatuba.

Emergency services were alerted when the bloodstained nine-year-old ran to the beach and raise the alarm.

Police officers who rushed to the house were horrified to find the mother Daniela de Oliveira Grecchi, 40, and her two daughters, aged 13 and 15, dead in the property.

They said that the older girl was lying in the hallway with a knife through her neck, while the 13-year-old was in the backyard in a shed lying in a pool of blood.

The mother meanwhile was in the bedroom where she had clearly put up a fight against her attacker and smashed furniture was lying around her.

The suspect was immediately identified as her boyfriend, 37-year-old Julio Cesar Cardoso, who was tracked by CCTV images escaping on a cycle to a nearby forested path leading into a narrow gorge.

He was running a council home for stray dogs looking for new homes, and shared his girlfriend’s passion for surfing in their free time where she also provided lessons to people interested in the sport.

Police officers pursued him using a sniffer dog to follow his trail and he was shot dead when he rushed to attack the officers with the knives, stabbing one of them on both of his arms before being shot himself.

He died later in hospital despite the attempts of medics to save his life.

Police are investigating what the cause was of the row and confirm that they had received a complaint about a loud argument at the time of the killings.

A friend of the couple Marçal Leme da Costa said that Daniela was a passionate surfer and added: “He was a calm guy, he had a good relationship with her. It’s unbelievable what happened.”