US: Five children, father die in murder-suicide
By Phuong Le05 Apr 2009 2:25 PM
GRAHAM, Washington, April 4 AP - An American man apparently shot dead five of his children, aged seven to 16, at their mobile home near Seattle and then killed himself at a casino, police said on Saturday.
Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff, called it a domestic violence situation and a murder-suicide.
"We believe they all died of gunshot wounds," Troyer said.
Auburn police found the father, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his car near the Muckleshoot Casino, about 50 kilometres south of Seattle.
Deputies checked the mobile home, which is about 30 kilometres southeast of the casino, and found four of the children dead in their beds and the fifth in the bathroom.
The mother of the victims was not at home, Troyer said.
He said investigators believe the husband and wife were not estranged.
"Clearly she's been very traumatised," Troyer told The News Tribune of Tacoma.
"You kind of get hardened to seeing people who are killed because of their own bad actions. But these kids died through no fault of their own. This is something you never want to see."
Authorities did not release the names of the family, but Troyer, who identified the dead children as four girls and a seven-year-old boy.
A neighbour, Dale Lund, told The Seattle Times the 7-year-old boy who was killed played at times with his grandson and the boys shared the same school bus stop and attended the same elementary school together.
He said the dead boy played in his own yard most of the time.
"They pretty much kept to themselves over there," Lund said.
Dozens of investigators were on the scene trying to reconstruct the crime and discover a motive.
