A woman teacher has been detained in Russia suspected of hanging her four-year-old son with tights while her husband and daughters were out jogging.

Lyubov Melnikova, 43, initially refused to let her family into their home when they returned.

Then she told her teenage daughters, 13 and 14, to wait in the street while her husband Vasily Melnikov came inside the house in Pushkino town, Moscow region, according to reports.

He saw the child hanging from sports apparatus with tights around his neck.

Vasily tried and failed to reanimate the boy, Ivan, and called an ambulance and police.

His wife ‘remained rooted to the spot’ and ‘could not explain anything’, reported Life.

Melnikova is an English teacher at a local school.

She has since been detained suspected of murdering the child.

The couple has another son, Sergey, 19.

‘The investigative department of Pushkino town, Moscow region, has detained a local resident, 43, suspected of murdering her son, four,’ said a statement from the Russian Investigative Committee.