Kids OK, Parents Dead

"NEWPORT NEWS, VA — Two people are dead after an apparent murder-suicide Sunday afternoon in northwest Newport News.

"About 5 p.m., Newport News police received a call about gunfire in the 700 block of Frigate Drive, in a neighborhood near the intersection of Fort Eustis Boulevard and Jefferson Avenue.

"When officers and medics arrived at the scene, they found a 30-year-old woman and a 32-year-old man, both of Newport News, dead of apparent gunshot wounds, said Officer Harold Eley, a Newport News police spokesman. The man allegedly shot the woman, to whom he was married but separated, then turned the gun on himself, Eley said.

"The woman's death brings to 11 the number of homicides in Newport News in 2009. The man's death is being investigated as a suicide, Eley said.

"Two children, a boy and a girl, were in the backyard at the time of the shooting, Eley said. The woman had come to her husband's house to pick the children up. The children's father allegedly shot their mother with a handgun near the home's front door before shooting himself.

"The children ran to a neighbor's house, where police were called."

From The Daily Press...