MILWAUKEE (AP) — Police found five people shot to death Monday inside a Milwaukee home and took into custody the man who dialed 911 to report the slayings, the city’s police chief said.
The police department received a call around 10:30 a.m. from a man who said his family was dead, Chief Alfonso Morales said during a brief news conference. When officers arrived at the house on the city’s north side they found five victims ranging in age from 14 to 41, the chief said.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Mayor Tom Barrett told reporters at the house that a baby was found alive in the house. Investigators believe the shooter decided to spare the infant.
Morales said investigators recovered a weapon and believe the shooter acted alone, adding that that there’s no threat to the public.
The man who called authorities to the house has been taken into custody, and detectives were trying to determine the relationship between the caller and the victims, Morales said. No names have been provided.
Morales called the shooting “a very tragic event.”
Milwaukee Police spokeswoman Sheronda Grant didn’t immediately respond to email and voicemail messages Monday afternoon.
The attack is the second mass shooting in Milwaukee this year. Molson Coors brewery worker Anthony Ferrill gunned down five co-workers on Feb. 26 before turning his gun on himself. His motive remains unknown.
White supremacist Wade Michael Page killed seven people at a Sikh temple in suburban Oak Creek before a police officer killed him in a firefight in 2012. That incident is the worst mass shooting in the Milwaukee area since 2005, when Terry Michael Ratzmann killed seven fellow congregants at the Living Church of God in suburban Brookfield before killing himself. Prosecutors never determined an exact motive, although they said he blamed the church for his depression and financial problems.
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