Four Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide On New Year's Day In South Carolina

Four people were found dead in a South Carolina home on New Year’s Day in what authorities believe was a murder-suicide.

The Lexington County Sheriff’s Department initially released a photo of 25-year-old Jorge Luis Chavez on Sunday night, confirming an “active search” in connection to the shooting. But the local coroner later said that Chavez was among the dead, WLOX reports.

Police tweeted that the search for a suspect was over and the situation “appears to be a murder-suicide.”

Chavez, 26-year-old Marissa Hope Reynoso and their two daughters, ages 1 and 4, were found dead just after 8 p.m. All of them were shot.

Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher told WLOX that Reynoso had an older child who wasn’t home at the time and is reportedly safe.

The New Year’s Day attack is a sobering reminder that many of America’s deadliest shootings happen at home. Shootings with multiple fatalities often involve domestic violence, and the victims are predominantly women and children. In 2015, almost a third of the mass shootings committed on American soil were related to domestic violence.