Florida Man Kills Several Family Members, Police Say

A stock police tape photo (Stock photo CC0)

A Florida man killed three of his family members over the weekend in a gated community, according to reports.

According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the shooting took place on the night of Aug. 25 in a home located in a community in Pembroke Pines, near Fort Lauderdale.

There, authorities found “multiple deceased victims, seemingly from gunshot wounds,” according to a press release from Pembroke Pines police.

Police and fire rescue crews were going to a “suspicious incident” at the same address when 911 dispatchers upgraded the call. They then “provided information that a male subject murdered family members and intended to end his own life,” Police Capt. Adam Feiner said in a news release, reported the newspaper.

A child who was found alive was taken to a nearby hospital. The child wasn’t hurt in the incident, said police.

The paper also reported that the man who killed the family members also threatened to kill himself.

It’s not clear if the male suspect also died via suicide, ABC News reported.

“I cannot confirm the status of the suspect at this time, but he is not at large,” police spokeswoman Amanda Conwell told ABC.

Police said the community isn’t in danger.

The names or ages of the victims were not released by police.

People with information about the case can call the Pembroke Pines Police at 954-431-2200.

Other details about the case are not clear.

Indiana Boy Arrested in Killing Siblings

Indianapolis police said a 15-year-old boy has been arrested in the fatal shooting of two teenage siblings.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said the juvenile was arrested Aug. 26 afternoon. He is suspected in the killings of 16-year-old Nicholas Nelson and his 15-year-old sister, Ashlynn Nelson, in an Indianapolis apartment on Aug. 23.

Marion County prosecutors will review the case and make a charging decision. Under Indiana law, a judge must decide whether defendants under the age of 16 accused of murder are tried in adult or juvenile court.

Police officers who attended the scene of the shooting said a male fled when they arrived.

WXIN-TV reports that a vigil was held on Aug. 25 for the siblings, who were Lawrence North High School students.

Facts About Crime in the United States

Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (pdf).

The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.

The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.

The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.

While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend. Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.