ORCHARDS, Wash — Five people died in an apparent murder-suicide at a home in Clark County on Sunday afternoon. Deputies and SWAT teams spent several hours outside the home attempting to contact people inside before eventually entering and finding the victims dead.
Deputies were called to a home on Northeast 92nd Street near Northeast 115th Avenue just after 1 p.m. for a welfare check, according to an initial news release from the sheriff's office, prompted by someone who called for help after getting a text message from a family member stating they had harmed others at the residence.
The relative who received the text didn't see the message and contact police for several hours, Clark County Sheriff's Office public information officer Sgt. Chris Skidmore said on Monday, so the deputies who arrived at the scene believed the victims were likely already dead at that point.
The five deceased people included the suspect, his wife, two adult daughters and the suspect's brother, Skidmore said. The sheriff's office is still working to get autopsies done and notify other family members, so police aren't releasing their names publicly yet.
Several hours outside
The text message was sent to a relative in the Seattle area Sunday morning, Skidmore said, but the relative didn't contact police until several hours later in the early afternoon, so that's when deputies were sent to the house.
Based on the timing of the text message, the deputies believed everyone inside the house was likely already dead, Skidmore said, which is part of why they didn't rush in right away — since the area was likely a crime scene rather than an active crime situation, the deputies had to wait on a search warrant from a judge.
"If (deputies) had an exchange with somebody at the residence, then we may have — or if we hear someone screaming for help, that creates exigency right away, and of course deputies are going to go in and deal with that and try to take care of it, if someone is at risk right then and there," he said. "Versus where they come and on scene there's no signs, no lights, not like anybody's home … they’ve made attempts to loud hail, and then they start working that and slowing that down because the concern about somebody being a threat immediately kind of lessons a little bit."
The sheriff's office had also talked to family members and learned that there could be firearms involved in the incident, so the Southwest Washington Regional SWAT team was called in.
"In that kind of situation, we are not just going to go and knock up on the door," Skidmore said. "Obviously, some investigative search that goes into that, trying to locate what’s in the house, who might be there, attempts to contact victims once we kind of had that information."
The sheriff's office eventually used a drone to see inside and observed several people who appeared to be deceased. The SWAT team, along with medics, entered the residence and confirmed that five people, including the shooter, were dead. In a news release on Sunday, the sheriff's office said the incident appeared to be a murder-suicide involving a firearm, and that there was not believed to be any further threat to the public.
Neighbors watched SWAT scene
Lilly Lewis, who lives across the street, said her family returned from a trip at around noon and didn't see much out of the ordinary on the street, but a short time later they noticed police and SWAT personnel huddled on a nearby corner. By around 2 p.m., she said they had begun hearing police speaking on a megaphone, asking the people inside the surrounded house to come out.
Another neighbor on the street, J.D. Hartman, said he and his family began hearing police over a loudspeaker announcing a welfare check. It wasn't clear where the police were or where the message was directed, he said, so he and others went to the front door to see what was going on.
"We saw the police presence and the SWAT team already out here … they had the road blocked off on the other side of the house," he said. "We just kind of came out and watched, and we pretty much sat here for two hours just trying to see what was going to happen or what was going on."
It took another hour after that before police broke down the door, Lewis said, but then the teams initially sent in a drone rather than a large group of people. Lewis and Hartman both said at that point they began to think that the situation was much more serious.
"Once they tried to do that first breach and they came straight back out, we all kind of put two and two together and realize that something really wrong was going on," Hartman said. "Once they brought the drone out and we heard the glass, breaking and stuff like that … and once the loudspeaker stopped, we all really knew that something terrible had happened."
Police at the scene were keeping onlookers at a distance, so Harman and his family didn't learn about the full scale of the incident until seeing details on the news later, but he said the way things played out at the scene already left them with a bad feeling once the loudspeaker stopped.
"When everything goes silent, like dead silent, it’s like, you know, you can feel it in your heart and in your bones," he said. "It was super bone-chilling, and we all just kind of looked at each other and went, 'Man ... this isn’t good.'"
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