GRAPEVINE, Texas — Police in a quiet Fort Worth suburb worked Monday to piece together a family history after a man dressed in a Santa Claus suit apparently shot six relatives and himself on Christmas.
A Grapevine police spokesman, Sgt. Robert Eberling, said the shooter showed up in the Santa outfit shortly before gunfire erupted and that the family appeared to have been opening Christmas presents. Police responding to a 911 call found four women and three men dead, alongside two handguns.
“We think he was just inside there celebrating Christmas with the rest of them and decided for whatever reason that’s how he’s going to end things,” Eberling said.
Investigators worked through the night, searching the apartment where the bodies were found, along with vehicles parked outside. Police said they thought the victims were related, though some were visiting and didn’t live in the apartment.
Eberling said investigators were piecing together a “family history,” but he declined to get into specifics. Autopsies of the shooter and the victims were being conducted Monday, but it would probably be today before their identities were released, he said.
Late Sunday evening, police intently searched a sport utility vehicle outside the apartment. The vehicle is registered to a man who listed his residence in the neighboring suburb of Colleyville. Thom as Ehrlich, who lives near the home in Colleyville, told The Associated Press he heard from neighbors that police went to the house Sunday. He said it was his understanding that the man and woman who once lived there were estranged.
Records show that the home, most recently valued on the county tax rolls at $336,200, had been sold in 2010 at a foreclosure auction.
Police and firefighters rushed to the Lincoln Vineyards complex at about 11:30 a.m. Sunday after receiving a 911 call in which no one was on the other end of the line. Because no one responded on the phone, police went into the apartment, located at the back of the complex.
They found the seven, ages 18 to 60, dead.
