A house fire in Oklahoma that claimed the lives of eight people, including six children, is being investigated as a murder-suicide.
Broken Arrow Police Chief Brandon Berryhill said during a news conference on Friday that police are looking into whether both adults found at the scene were involved in the deaths, noting that the six children ranged in age from one to 13, the Associated Press reported. Berryhill didn’t give the names of the victims or their relationship to one another, though he did note that they were all family members living together.
The two adults who were found dead in the home are currently the “primary suspects,” since they were found in the front of the house. All the children were found in a bedroom, where the fire was set.
Ethan Hutchins, a police spokesman, told Fox News that police were still investigating exactly what happened.
“Preliminary reports are that this is going to be a homicide investigation,” Hutchins said. “We’re still focused on trying to put out the fire and also investigate what happened to these victims.”
The spokesman told the AP that the medical examiner’s office would have to complete its work before the identities of the victims are released.
Further, Broken Arrow Fire Department Chief Jeremy Moore said Friday that so far, it doesn’t appear that any of the deaths were related to the fire. The police chief added that guns were found in the home.
“To arrive on scene yesterday and to see the looks on our first responders’ and firefighters’ faces just absolutely broke my heart,” Moore said during the news conference, according to the AP.
Police and firefighters were called to the house fire in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, at around 4 p.m. on Thursday. They found the two adults in the front of the house with fatal injuries that “appeared criminal in nature,” Moore said Friday. The children were found elsewhere in the home, where the fire appeared to be focused, ABC News reported.
Catelin Powers, who witnessed the fire, told the AP that she saw two men and a woman on her phone outside the home, with another man coming out of the house dragging what appeared to be an unconscious, unresponsive woman from the home.
“Her arms were flopped to her sides,” Powers told the outlet.
