MILWAUKEE — Authorities in Wisconsin are investigating the deaths of five people found in a Milwaukee home, the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's office said Sunday evening.
At about 3:45 p.m. Sunday, Milwaukee Police responded to a welfare check at a residence where four men and one woman were found dead, Milwaukee Assistant Police Chief Paul Formolo said during a Sunday evening news conference. The victims’ identities are pending.
"Citizens of our community had concerns with the occupants that resided there," Formolo said. "It's a normal call for us to respond to. We do it all the time."
The motive and information regarding any suspects are unknown at this time, Formolo said. "There is no information to suggest that there is a threat to the community," he added.
“The murders discovered today on a residential block in the heart of our city are horrific," Acting Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said in a statement Sunday night. "First, I offer my condolences to the families and friends of the victims. Whatever the circumstances, we must share the grief of those who have lost loved ones."
“It is important not to feel numbed by the ongoing violence in our community," the statement continued. "A horrible crime has again occurred, and it is not a movie or a fictional account. These victims died in our city, in one of our neighborhoods."
Johnson said efforts to reduce violence will continue and will be achieved through strengthened and improved law enforcement, community intervention and a renewed commitment to prevention.
"We can never accept murderous violence as routine, and we must together recommit ourselves to our shared responsibility to find solutions and make our city safer," he said.
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"This is ridiculous," Arnitta Holliman, director of Milwaukee's Office of Violence Prevention, said at the news conference. "I'm sorry, I don't know a better word to say. The community is tired. We are tired of seeing people's lives snuffed out too soon in preventable situations. This is absolutely preventable. Any of the gun violence that we're seeing is preventable. And we cannot continue this same trajectory that we've seen for the last two years. That means each and every one of us has to step up, speak up, stand up, do something to change the course of what's happening in our community."
She said if you know someone who may be on the verge of committing an act of gun violence, stop them or reach out for help.
"We are sick and tired of it," she said. "And we as a community, that means all of us, have to be sick and tired of it enough that we step up and do something."
Autopsies will be performed Monday, the medical examiner's office said.
“We hope that person is caught or turns himself in," Milwaukee activist Vaun Mayes said at the scene. "We will do what we do, in collaboration with the Office of Violence Prevention and 414 Life to help try to deter or cease, interrupt some of this violence as much as we can.”
This weekend's death investigations in Milwaukee County included eight homicides, eight probable overdoses, five from COVID-19 and one suicide, according to a Twitter post from the medical examiner's office. Autopsies are scheduled for Monday.
Contributing: The Associated Press
