Houston police say two adults and two children were found dead after a shooting at a home in the 2100 block of Kingston Street in River Oaks. Officers were the only people to enter the house and found all four victims inside after a babysitter and a relative called police worried because they had not heard from the family.
Police said the four dead were family members, and investigators remained at the scene Tuesday as they tried to piece together what happened. Officials said the case was still in its early phases, and authorities believe the shooting was a murder-suicide.
The deaths landed hard in River Oaks, one of Houston’s best-known neighborhoods, where residents said the violence felt out of step with daily life. Cindy, who said she has lived there for 19 years, said she had never seen anything like it. “We haven’t had these kind of tragedies,” she said. “We don’t have robberies.”
She added that the neighborhood has strong law enforcement coverage but that the killings were still devastating. “We have incredible constables in this neighborhood, but it’s very sad,” Cindy said. “I just shake for the little kids,” she said.
The unanswered question now is not whether the home holds a tragedy — police have already said it does — but what led a family of four to end up dead inside it. Investigators have not said who fired the shots, and until they do, the case remains one of those scenes that changes a neighborhood in a single morning and leaves everyone else trying to understand how it began.