Man Suspected Of Murder-Suicide At Montgomery Park
By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 23, 2007
A woman and three children were found fatally shot last night in two cars at a park in the Damascus area, and a man's body was found nearby in what Montgomery County police described as an apparent murder-suicide.
The man apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and police said they recovered a weapon thought to be a rifle.
The cluster of killings was among the deadliest in county history. Police did not disclose the victims' names.
Maryland-National Capital Park Police officers found the bodies of the woman and children in the parking lot of Unity Neighborhood Park, at 3724 Damascus Rd., about 9:30 p.m., Montgomery Capt. Terry Pierce said. The man was found about 11 p.m. about 100 yards from the cars, lying on the weapon, Pierce said.
The children, two boys and a girl, were thought to be 5 to 12 years old, Pierce said.
He said investigators did not find a weapon in the cars. Officers were assuming that the man was the assailant in a murder-suicide, Pierce said. He said the woman and children were related, but he could not be specific.
He said two bodies were found in each car. Investigators think each adult drove a vehicle to the park, he said.
Maryland State Police sent a helicopter to search for a suspect, and officers with police dogs canvassed the area on foot, Pierce said.
The 1.5-acre park is in a sparsely populated section of northern Montgomery. "It is just a little tiny park," Pierce said. "It's got a playground and a parking area. It's heavily wooded."
He said investigators did not know when the shots were fired. Park police officers stopped when they noticed a Ford Taurus and a Nissan with their engines running in the otherwise deserted park, which is part of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission system.
Pierce said that the Ford is registered to a person who lives in Howard County and that investigators went to the corresponding address. He said investigators were seeking a motive and trying to learn whether the adults were the children's parents.
"At this point, we're trying to determine if it's domestic," he said.
In April, a Montgomery County father killed his two children before committing suicide. Gerardo Roque, a horse farm worker, hanged his 1-year-old son, Carlos Diego Danforth, and 2-year-old daughter, Maria Socorro Danforth, in Boyds, a rural area in the northern part of the county.
In 1995, Bruman Stalin Alvarez, a day laborer, killed four members of a Potomac family and a painter who was working at their house.
Snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo fatally shot six people in Montgomery in 2002. When Muhammad was sentenced after being convicted of six counts of first-degree murder, a prosecutor told the judge that no defendant had been convicted of killing more people in county history.
Staff writer Kristen Mack contributed to this report.
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