Crime scene tape blocks the entrance to the Gilbert home where multiple bodies were found late Monday evening Matt York Matt York

Updated 08.50am

THE DEATHS OF a mother and her two children at a house in Arizona yesterday were most likely to have been a murder-suicide, police have said.

The bodies were found shot inside the house in the Gilbert area in the mid-western state late on Monday evening, Azcentral reports.

The woman in question has been named by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as 45-year-old Lisa Gerhart.

It’s understood she shot her 17-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter with a handgun which she then turned on herself.

The house was filled with carbon monoxide when police arrived having been alerted at 9pm on Monday by a neighbour to the fact that a car was running with a hose connected to the exhaust pipe outside the home.

Arpaio told a press conference that the tragedy was most likely a case of domestic violence, and that there were “problems within the family”.

There could “possibly be a separation between the husband and wife,” he said.

Domestic violence is something we have to look into. People are killing each other and taking their own lives.

The sheriff did suggest however that a possibility of another suspect murdering the family still exists and is being considered.

With AP

Originally published 22.14, 26 July

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