Woman, Daughter Kill 5 Family Members, Including 3 Children

A woman and her daughter were taken into custody for killing five family members inside an apartment in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, on Monday.

Shana Decree, 45, and her 19-year-old daughter Dominique Decree were charged with five counts of homicide and expected to be arraigned overnight. Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said the dead included Shana’s two children, Naa'Irah Smith, 25, and Damon Decree Jr., 13, Shana’s sister, Jamilla Campbell, 42, and Campbell's 9-year-old twin daughters, Imani and Erika Allen.

“This is a tragedy. The people that committed these atrocious acts are in custody and we’ll make them pay for their crimes,” Weintraub said, the Intelligencer reported.

Police found the bodies during a welfare check at a unit in the Robert Morris Apartment on Monday evening.

A resident in the apartment told NBC10 neighbors tried knocking on the door Friday but no one answered.

"I saw the landlord and said, 'What's going on?' And she said, 'We are doing a welfare check because trash is piled up out there for awhile to see if they are alright.' Nobody answered the door so the maintenance guys went in," Nicole Owens said.

Morrisville police Chief George McClay said they initially believed the incident was a result of hazardous materials inside the apartment. Firefighters and the county’s hazmat team checked the entire apartment and ruled out the possibility.

The investigation was ongoing.

In a similar incident in January, a man surrendered before police after killing his three children and shooting his wife at a Texas City apartment. Police reached the apartment on a welfare check and found the bodies of the children, with bullet marks. The mother too was shot and rushed to a nearby hospital. The children were believed to be five and two years old, while the third child was an infant.

Juniad Hashim Mehmood, 37, surrendered to the police and admitted to killing the children. “It’s a very intense scene over there. Everybody involved is either deceased or injured,” Texas City Police spokesman Lt. Kenneth Brown said, adding the mother was stable.