A man has been charged with capital murder after five children and three adults were found dead at a house in suburban Houston, Texas, on Saturday night.
Police said they arrived at the home to conduct a welfare check and spotted a body. When they entered the property, gunfire rang out.
A 49-year-old suspect police identified as David Conley was arrested "after members of the Harris County sheriff's office High Risk Operations Unit and Hostage Negotiation Team negotiated his surrender", police said in a statement.
Court records showed more than 20 state and federal cases involving Conley dating back to the 1980s, including several indictments for assault of a family member and a 2013 conviction.
Thomas Gilliland, a sheriff's office spokesman, told the Houston Chronicle special response officers were called to the scene after no one came to the door and deputies discovered a warrant had been issued last month to a man at the house, regarding an alleged assault of a family member.
They then spotted a child’s body while looking through windows. They entered the home and the suspect began shooting, he said.
As investigators went in and out of the property on Sunday morning, a dozen neighbours gathered at the yellow crime scene tape that cordoned off the entrance to the street, a tree-lined road about 15 miles north of downtown Houston with neat, modern houses. One said that it was a quiet, nice place to live.
It is the second mass shooting at a home in suburban north Houston in a little over a year. In July 2014 Ronald Haskell, a 33-year-old with a history of family-related violence, was charged with capital murder in the shooting deaths of a family of six: two parents and their four children, aged from four to 13.
A 15-year-old girl survived the shootings, which occurred in the town of Spring.
Police were set to provide more information on the Houston shootings at a press conference scheduled for 4pm ET.
Guardian