USA Today, April 2021
Six people were found fatally shot in a suburban Dallas home early Monday after police say two brothers made a pact to kill four family members and themselves. Officers in Allen went to the home for a welfare check around 1 a.m. after getting a call from a friend of one of the brothers who feared he was suicidal, said police Sgt. Jon Felty. Felty said one of the two brothers wrote a lengthy post on social media in which he said he and his brother had a plan to kill their family members and then themselves.
Police found the six family members dead in the home, who were the two brothers, a sister, their father and mother, and a grandmother. Felty said the those dead ranged in age from 19 to mid-70s. He said the slayings likely occurred over the weekend.
Felty said police were not yet releasing the names of the victims. He said the deaths were being investigated as a murder-suicide, but he could not yet say who shot whom. The brother who wrote the social media post also said in it that he thought it was too easy for his brother to obtain a firearm, Felty said.
A mass killing where two siblings are the perpetrators is rare, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University.
