GUILDERLAND — A mother shot and killed her 5-year-old daughter Friday before shooting herself in a home on Schoolhouse Road, police said Saturday.

Caitlin Melville, 27, lived at the home with her daughter, who was a kindergarten student at Guilderland's Westmere Elementary School. The child's name was not provided. No details were available about the type of gun used.

Police said in a press release that "at this time we are unable to provide details of the motive surrounding" the murder-suicide.

Police said they are still investigating, but would not be releasing any further information Saturday about the incident, which was discovered mid-afternoon Friday.

The scene, a small house with a handicapped-access ramp, continued to be guarded Saturday afternoon in the residential neighborhood just west of the state Thruway and south of Western Avenue.

The somber discovery was at odds with the bright sunshine of a warm spring day that brought out some neighbors doing yard work. One of them, who asked not to be identified, said an older man had lived at the home with a woman and a young girl.

Albany County records show the homeowner as Uwe M. Donaldson, who bought it in late 2017. An obituary is posted online for Donaldson, and the neighbor said she saw a coroner's vehicle at the home around two weeks ago, about the time when Donaldson died, according to the obituary.

The neighbor said she assumed it was likely Donaldson's relatives who were also living at the home, though police did not confirm Donaldson was related to Melville.

"We used to see her put a little girl on the school bus," the neighbor said.

It remained unclear when the deaths occurred and how they were discovered, but police began gathering at the home shortly before 3 p.m. Friday, the neighbor said. The neighbor said she saw one body being removed from the home Friday night.

The house at 169 Schoolhouse Road is near the intersection with Trillium Lane close to the Redeemer Church.

The neighbor said she didn't know the home's occupants well, and said there were rarely, if ever, guests at the home. The wooden ramp was installed in front of the home just before winter after the elderly man lost a limb, she said.

Police told the neighbor that a husky was safely removed from the home.

Relatively rare

A 2015 report by the Violence Policy Center found that an estimated 1,200 people died in murder-suicides in America in 2014.

The study found that just 11 percent of the killers in murder-suicides were women, and 13 percent of the victims were children and teens younger than 18.

While police gave no information regarding Melville's motive, research on the subject shows that mothers who murder their children are "often poor, socially isolated, full-time caregivers, who were victims of domestic violence or had other relationship problems," according to a 2007 study on maternal filicide published in World Psychiatry, a medical journal covering research in the area of psychiatry.

Mothers who killed their children and themselves "often had evidence of depression or psychosis," the study found. The average age of filicidal mothers was late 20s, according to the study.

School responds

The Guilderland school district issued a statement Saturday following news of the girl's murder.

"The (school district) community is stunned and saddened over this news and we are all grieving this loss of life," the statement read. "In times like these, our first obligation is to support the health and safety our students, faculty, and staff."

The district said a team of counselors, school psychologists, and social workers will be on hand at Westmere Elementary in the coming days to support to any student, faculty or staff member who might need help.