Maple Valley police are investigating the Thursday night deaths of a man and his toddler as a possible murder-suicide.

“Something like this is probably one of the most tragic and horrible things, as an officer or first responder can go to,” Sergeant Ryan Abbott with the King County Sheriff’s Office told KIRO Radio. “….It was quite a chaotic scene, and just extremely tragic.”

Dispatchers received a 911 call around 10 p.m. Thursday evening from a woman worried about her 30-year-old boyfriend and 2-1/2-year-old son. She could not locate the two after returning home in the 21300 block of SE 277th Place. The King County Sheriff’s Office was sent to the call.

“As we were arriving at the scene, she ended up locating her 2-1/2-year-old son in a room in the house,” Abbot said. “He was unresponsive and not breathing.”

“A short time later, they found (the boyfriend/father) in a different room in the house,” he said. “He was deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

KIRO 7 TV reports that police are investigating the incident at a possible murder-suicide and that the boy was not shot.

The Medical Examiner will release the names and official causes of death in the coming days. Abbott said that police had not visited the house before, for any type of call.