Five family members shot to death in home outside Seattle

Authorities found five people shot to death inside a home south-east of Seattle on Monday morning and arrested a teenager in connection with the killings, police said.

The slayings in Fall City, Washington, were the 25th mass murder in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The nonpartisan archive defines a mass murder as one in which four or more victims are killed.

The case was also among more than 425 mass shootings – in which four or more victims are killed or wounded – across the US so far this year, according to the archive.

An emailed statement on Monday evening from King county council member Sarah Perry said the shooting involved a family of seven people. Three of those found slain on Monday were young teenagers, and two were adults. A sixth person was injured.

A neighbor told the local television news outlet KING that a couple and their five children lived in the home where the mass murder occurred.

Several people in Fall City called 911 at about 5am to report the shooting, King county sheriff’s office spokesperson Mike Mellis said at a media briefing on Monday afternoon.

Arriving deputies immediately took one teenager into custody while another teen who had been hurt was taken to a Seattle hospital, Mellis said. Both teens lived at the house, he said.

Deputies entering the home then discovered the bodies of five people, Mellis said. Two were adults, and three were described by Mellis as young teenagers. No names have been released yet.

“Once bodies were discovered, clearly we understand that this is a hugely significant crime scene,” he said.

Mellis said there was no ongoing threat to the community.

“I have no reason to think that there will be any additional arrests,” he said.

The teen in custody was booked into King county’s juvenile detention facility, according to Mellis. The teen will appear in court for a first hearing on Tuesday or Wednesday, a spokesperson for the county prosecutor’s office said in an email.

Neighbor Lynne Trowern told KING: “I’m just in total shock, I keep bursting into tears.”

Local sheriff Patricia Cole-Tindall told KING that she was “very sad, very disturbed” to learn about the shooting.

The killings in Fall City seem to broadly fit the definition of a type of crime known since the 1980s as family annihilations. Those cases often involve a person with a gun who murders multiple close family members.

Communities in the US have the tendency to interpret family annihilations as isolated tragedies. But a 2023 Indianapolis Star investigation found they had been occurring across the US – on average – once every five days.

The US perhaps does not understand family annihilations as well as it could because there is no centralized database for that kind of crime providing insights into characteristics or prevalence, as the Star investigation noted.

Annually high rates of mass shootings and mass murders in the US have prompted some in the country to call for more substantial federal gun control. But Congress has been unable or unwilling to implement such measures.

The Associated Press contributed reporting