A murder-suicide in Midvale, Utah, has neighbors and police officers looking for answers after a fatal shooting. KSL reported earlier that two adults and one child were shot dead in a double murder-suicide at the Vantana Courtyard Apartments, according to Murray Police .
Shortly before noon on Sunday, Murray police officers were dispatched to an apartment located at 224 E. Vantana Court, where a caller reported hearing gunshots. When officers arrived inside the apartment, they found the bodies of a man, a woman, and a child. Three other children who lived in the home were found unharmed.
Some neighbors who heard the shots didn’t know exactly what they were hearing. One neighbor reported thinking that the gunshots sounded like a bang, as if a garbage can had been picked up and thrown down. The woman states, according to Fox-13 Now .
“We heard a big bang, we didn’t know what it was. We didn’t think anything of it, and we just thought someone had thrown something in the garbage.”
The neighbor also described the chaotic events that occurred in the moments just after the gunshots .
“We went outside to take out the garbage and we saw a cop racing down the street and we saw two female girls and a male run outside in their pajamas yelling, ‘Help!’ at the cop, waving their hands saying they needed help and then the cop went to them and went inside the house. The police reaction, they were coming really fast and they were just trying to get into the house and get the kids safe and trying to get everyone and trying to figure out what happened.”
Murray police officers believe that the murder-suicide was related to domestic problems inside the home, though they have not gone into much detail. No recent reports of domestic violence had been reported at the time. For now, police officers are withholding the names and ages of the victims, pending family notification. Officer Kenny Bass told Fox-13 Now the following.
“Right now we don’t know what took place between them, but everything surrounding it, being in a home with children and all that, seems to indicate some kind of domestic issue. We just don’t know the relationship as of yet.”
Statistic information regarding murder suicides indicates that prior cases of domestic violence, though not reported, are always a precursor to the actual murder-suicide — citing that 90 percent of the time past behavior indicates future tragedy. Most victims of murder-suicides, also known as homicide-suicides, are female.
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