Little Rock police found two people fatally shot in an apartment complex Friday in what a spokesman said is an apparent murder-suicide.
Little Rock police responded at 1:55 p.m. to an unknown trouble call at 5201 Geyer Springs Road after a 911 caller and a school official at Geyer Springs Elementary School reported hearing gunshots, officer Eric Barnes said.
The school, which connects to the back fence of the apartment complex, was briefly placed on lockdown, Barnes said, but it was lifted before 3 p.m.
Officers found a man and woman fatally shot in an apartment on the first floor of The Summit at Geyer Springs apartment complex building, Barnes said. Barnes said the two were in a relationship.
The identities of the victims were not immediately released, pending family notification. Whether the person with the apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound was the male or female was not released.
The death is the first homicide in Little Rock since Sept. 26 and the 40th homicide of the year. The last time Little Rock had no homicides for a full month was in June 2017.
The Summit at Geyer Springs is a collection of buildings with 115 apartments built in 1969, according to Pulaski County property records. Detectives and officers stayed around apartment 1102 Friday afternoon as the ambulance that had first responded to the call left and was replaced with the crime scene unit bus.
Family members and friends of the victims began arriving at the apartment an hour after police responded. One woman began screaming as she waited to get confirmation of the deaths inside the apartment.
At one point, the woman began running toward the yellow crime scene tape as her friends tried to call her back. Two officers caught her before she reached the line and held her back.
"Just tell me," she said. "I need to know."
One of the woman's friends led her back to their vehicle, where she slumped on its trunk and cried.
The death, if ruled a murder-suicide, would be the eighth domestic violence homicide this year, according to data from the police department.
"Last month was Domestic Violence Awareness [month]," Barnes said. "And that's something we always want to encourage -- if you see something, say something."
Metro on 11/09/2019