Co-Worker's Concerns Lead to Grisly Find in Chicago Home

Chicago police on Thursday found the bodies of four men, one woman, and a child inside a home on the city's South Side in what police say is being investigated as an apparent multiple homicide. Interim Chicago Police Superintendent John Escalante said it appeared to be an isolated incident and there was no wider threat to the community, but police added extra patrols in the neighborhood as a precaution. Asked whether it could have been a murder-suicide, he said it was "a possibility." A police spokesman said later Thursday that police were "not yet" searching for suspects. The bodies had signs of trauma, but authorities have not determined the cause of death.

Escalante told reporters that police checked the house Thursday afternoon after receiving a call from a co-worker worried about someone who lived there. The person had missed two days of work, which was "highly unusual and very suspicious," Escalante said. Authorities were still working to identify the dead. Escalante said the child was thought to be 10 to 12 years old. A relative of the family who lived in the home said Thursday evening that the family seemed happy. She said living in the home were a couple originally from Mexico, their son, their daughter, and the daughter's two children. "They were a normal family. Everything was fine," she tells the AP. "Right now we just want to know who did this. They didn't deserve this. We don't understand what happened." (More Chicago stories.)