CHICAGO (AP) – Chicago police on Thursday found the bodies of four men, one woman and a child inside a home on the city’s South Side in what police said was being investigated as an apparent multiple homicide.
Interim Chicago Police Superintendent John Escalante said it appeared to be an isolated incident and there was no wider threat to the community, but police added extra patrols in the neighborhood as a precaution. Asked whether it could have been a murder-suicide, he said it was “a possibility.”
Standing in the street in the Gage Park neighborhood, Escalante told reporters that police checked the house Thursday afternoon after receiving a call from a co-worker worried about someone who lived there. The person had missed two days of work, which was “highly unusual and very suspicious,” Escalante said.
Police arrived at the single-family brick home just after 1 p.m. They looked inside and saw one body, entered and found five more bodies. The bodies had signs of trauma, but authorities have not determined the cause of death.
Authorities were still working to identify the dead. Escalante said it’s probable they were all family members and police were trying to locate relatives. The child is thought to be 10 to 12 years old.