Sheriff: 5 dead in rural Washington standoff, including gunman

Sheriff’s deputies were called to the scene by the gunman just before 9 a.m. The gunman had called an officer he had previous contact with directly and told him about shooting four people and his intention to kill himself, Spurling said.

A police spokesman said: “The suspect apparently came outside the home and shot himself”. They said she will be taken in by Child Protective Services, until family members can be notified.

It was common for the family to do shooting practice, Pigott said.

Police did find four victims in a chicken coop on the property.

A child who appears to be the only survivor of a shooting in rural Washington state that left five people dead is related to the victims.

The victims were identified by the county coroner’s office as Lana J. Carlson, 49, Quinn Carlson, 16, and Troy Carlson, 18.

Investigators will be conducting interviews and reviewing evidence into the weekend to piece together what happened, Mason County sheriff’s Chief Deputy Ryan Spurling said.

Authorities negotiated with the suspect for roughly three hours before he walked out of the house and shot himself in front of officers.

“She’s the only living person who survived” Spurling said.

“That’s when this all started to happen”, she said.

“It’s a bad tragedy”, said Sheriff Casey Salisbury.

Circumstances of the gun violence were not immediately clear. The two boys had been adopted from Russian Federation years ago.

Spurling said the sheriff’s office was working to confirm that the girl was also an adopted child of Carlson’s.

Jack Pigott didn’t know what to think when ambulances arrived in his neighborhood outside Belfair.

Pigott said the husband had a heating and air conditioning contractor business. “Bang, bang, then a pause, then bang, bang, bang, bang”. When he returned home, he was on a lot of medications, Pigott said of the man.

It remained unclear when the four people found shot to death inside the home were slain.