Santa Clara Shooting Leaves Six Dead, One Wounded

Police responding to a call from concerned neighbors at 8:30 pm Sunday night were surprised to find a macabre scene in a Santa Clara townhouse , with five dead bodies and two critically injured. Of the injured, one, a young baby thought to be one or two years old, died overnight. The injured woman remains in critical condition.

Police are still trying to determine the ages and identities of all involved - including at least two children - and whether the victims were related. The suspected shooter is said to be among the dead, leading cops to surmise this may have been a murder-suicide. 

The neighborhood where the shooting occurred, a townhouse community called  Rivermark, is home primarily to young families - some of which may have recently fallen on difficult times during the recession. Santa Clara is not a stranger to these sorts of killings and has suffered from at least three murder-suicides in the past decade.

In 2002, two months after her husband of eight years had left her, 42-year-old Taeyoung Schiefer killed him and their two daughters in their family home before killing herself.

In May of 2003, a part-time grocery clerk named Jose Jesus Zacarias drowned his 3-year-old son and 12-year-old stepdaughter from his wife’s previous marriage before driving to Santa Cruz and jumping off a cliff.

In December of 2003, 37-year-old Todd Vernon shot his wife and his three children before killing himself in bed, beside his dead wife.

Six dead, one critically wounded in Santa Clara shooting [Mercury News]