Oklahoma City police investigating apparent murder-suicide.
A father is suspected of killing his three young children and then himself, according to local reports out of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Police did not immediately identify the people involved, only saying the kids were younger than age 7. Officers reportedly said they told the mother as soon as they could about the discovery of the bodies.
“This is a tragic situation,” Oklahoma City police Capt. Michelle Henderson said, according to KOCO. “A lot of emotions are involved, so we want to always be very cognizant and sympathetic to that and make sure that nobody finds out on the TV or the social media before we have a chance to speak to someone.”
Cops reportedly said they received a request for a welfare check at around 4:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.
“Dad had left the house with his three small children, made threatening statements, so we were in the area for several hours looking for him and the children,” Henderson said, according to KWTV.
That search ended in tragedy at about 7:30 a.m. A woman walking her dogs encountered a parked vehicle about a half mile away from where the father and children lived.
“When I went over there, I knew something was off already because the guy’s car was running and it was parked three feet from the curb,” the woman, who requested anonymity, told the outlet. “It was on the right side of the road, but it was just odd.”
The man did not move as she passed by multiple times, she said. He simply reclined in the vehicle.
“I did start to suspect that maybe the guy wasn’t alive in the car, so I went to the passenger side where the window was cracked only a little bit, in case he was drunk or belligerent,” she said. “When I went over to the window, it didn’t cross my mind that anybody else was in the car.”
It was when she got closer that she spotted blood under the vehicle.
“When I saw that blood, I didn’t go any further,” she said. “I didn’t need to see what was in there.”
The woman voiced shock at the scene.
“It’s sad that anybody gets to that point that they gotta take themselves out, but to take three kids out,” she said. “Many of us didn’t want to believe that’s what really happened here.”
[Screenshot via KOCO]