Digital News Report- Six people have been shot and killed in an apparent murder-suicide at a Silicon Valley, CA home late Sunday night. Three of those shot were children. A seventh person is in critical condition at a nearby hospital. Police were called when neighbors spotted an injured woman in front of the home. When the police died, they found five bodies and a woman and toddler injured. The toddler later died at the hospital.
Police suspect that the victims are part of one family, but there has not been confirmation. It appears that one of the adult men had a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The names will not be released until the next of kin have been notified.
The upscale Rivermark neighborhood is located just north of San Jose by the Sun Microsystems campus. The neighborhood is a mix of large freestanding homes and townhouses. The development is known to be quiet and this incident has stunned many residents.
“It just simply never happens here. I mean never,” neighbor Jane Thornton told the San Jose Mercury News. “We are in hard times here.”
“When things get tough in life, in the world, it seems that these kinds of incidents erupt, and I would just urge all of our community to pay attention to your neighbors,” Santa Clara Mayor Patricia Mahan told the San Francisco Chronicle. “So often the greatest regret is the feeling that this could have been prevented if somebody had seen something or someone could have intervened in some way.”