Five adults were found dead inside a Phoenix home after a shooting in a suspected dispute over the family’s business, police said.
Police said on Thursday the three men were brothers and the dead women apparently were the men’s mother and a spouse of one of the brothers. Two other women and two children managed to escape the home unharmed.
Police Sgt. Trent Crump said the family had origins in Morocco. During an hour-long standoff before the bodies were found, police used a megaphone to try to communicate with the occupants of the home, addressing the family in Arabic.
One of those women told officers that the shooting stemmed from a family dispute gone wrong, Crump said.
“Our dispatcher could hear shots fired in the background while that call was coming in,” Crump said. “A caller had been able to escape the home at that point, get out and start to give us information.”
The names and ages of the three men and two women weren’t immediately released.
The Arizona Republic reported that one neighbour said the family owned a transportation service. Because only two vehicles are allowed in the driveway at any one time, the family purchased a home in an adjacent neighbourhood in order to park their fleet, according to the newspaper.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many people fired shots, but police say they weren’t looking for any outstanding suspects.
Officers discovered the bodies after an hours-long barricade situation in a residential neighbourhood. Witnesses at the scene said they heard the sound of muted gunshots about an hour after a standoff began.
TV footage showed several SWAT team officers breaking the glass of a back patio door to enter the home. The SWAT team used a robot to search the house before sending in a dog and officers, Crump said.
A police perimeter remained in place well into the night, as investigators padded around the scene in booties to document evidence and detectives went door to door.
