Woman kills 3 children and herself in Oklahoma home

Four people, including a woman and her three children, were found dead in a home near Tulsa, Oklahoma, local officials said. Suspected murder-suicide.

The incident began around 4 p.m. Thursday when police on patrol in Verdigris, a town just east of Tulsa in Rogers County, received a call about a woman being held hostage by another woman in the garage of a house.

The woman was taken to safety and told police the suspect was in the house with her children and had a gun. A number of police officers, including a Cherokee SWAT team, were dispatched to the scene.

“Police say they knew the woman was armed with a semi-automatic pistol and were trying to get her out of the house because she didn’t want to go inside because of her children,” journalist Reagan Ledbetter said.

A few hours later, around 7:30 p.m., police entered the home and found four bodies. The woman is believed to have killed her children before taking her own life.

It was not immediately clear when the four died.

The identities of the deceased have not been released, but police said the children were between six months and 11 years old. No information about a possible motive is available at this time.