Five killed including girl, 5, and boy, 1, in horror murder-suicide at Georgia home
Cops found the two young children deceased, along with a 43-year-old woman, a 32-year-old man, and a 26-year-old woman, all of whom appeared to have been shot.
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Police called to do a welfare check at an apartment near Atlanta discovered five people shot dead, including a 5-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy, in an apparent murder-suicide.
In an emailed statement, Lt. Shane Smith of the DeKalb County Police Department said officers responded to the grisly scene on Saturday shortly before 7:30 p.m. There, they found the two young children deceased, along with a 43-year-old woman, a 32-year-old man, and a 26-year-old woman, all of whom appeared to have been shot. None of the victims have been identified, and it is not yet known which of them was the shooter.
“We are still attempting to notify the next of kin for everyone,” Smith said. “Once done, we will be able to release the names.”
The DeKalb PD said investigators believe the killings were domestic-related, and said the residence where it occurred was located on the 2100 block of Vineyard Walk, which, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is an apartment complex called the Vineyards at Flat Shoals.
DeKalb County, Georgia’s fourth-most populous, is roughly 20 minutes northeast of Atlanta.
The investigation is ongoing, but police said preliminary information suggests murder-suicide. The precise relationship between the five dead remains unknown.
The nonprofit Violence Policy Center calls murder-suicides a “shockingly common form of gun violence in the United States,” and says they occur in the US an estimated 10 times a week. Some 1,200 Americans die in murder-suicides annually, and nine out of 10 murder-suicides involve a firearm, according to the center. Nearly two-thirds of all murder-suicides are carried out by an intimate partner of the victim.
Authorities have not released any further information as of Sunday afternoon, and a DeKalb County PD spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent.