Police chief: Madison’s first homicide of the year appears to be murder-suicide

Chief: Father, son found dead on east side Sunday

Leah Linscheid by Leah Linscheid

Madison police are investigating the city’s first homicide of the year, according to police Chief Mike Koval.

Officers responded to a report of shots fired on the east side at 6:07 a.m. Sunday morning. At the scene they found a father and his adult son with gunshot wounds at the house where they both lived in on Meadowlark Drive.

Koval said the deaths appeared to be a murder-suicide.

Madison has first official homicide of the year. Officers located two dead (father and son) with gunshot wounds on Meadowlark Drive early this morning @WISCTV_News3 — Madalyn O’Neill (@news3madalyn) April 1, 2018

The names of the two killed were not released Sunday.

Neighborhood residents say the area is generally quiet, but on Sunday morning, Michael Gilligan remembers hearing something unusual.

“Doors opening and closing, you could hear it outside,” he said. “It was just the ambulance and firefighters and the police.”

Next door to Gilligan, first responders found a 58-year-old father and his 33-year-old son with gunshot wounds, pronounced dead shortly after.

“This has all the tell-tale signs of a murder suicide,” Koval said.

He said the wife and mother of the two found them first and immediately called police, who got there just after 6:00 in the morning.

“You could still smell hanging in the air remnant gun powder,” Koval said.

Police recovered the gun, along with four shell casings.

It’s still unclear who may have shot whom, but first responders found the father and son in the same bedroom, and Koval said there are indications one may have been sleeping when he was shot.

Police interviewed a friend of the son who spent the night, along with the mother and wife, but Koval said they’re still looking for answers.

“Everybody was seemingly getting on with their normal business, watching movies,” he said. “There was nothing that would have given any tell-tale sign this was going happen this morning.”

Police said the shooting was likely isolated. In such a quiet community, Gilligan said it sounds inconceivable.

“It was just, you know, just a normal family,” Gilligan said. “Sometimes things are unexpected like that.”

Koval said police have a theory of what happened, but they’re waiting on autopsy results to confirm.

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