Police found five people dead, including three children, at a home in North Carolina in what the police are investigating as a murder-suicide.

Officers from the High Point Police Department responded to a 911 call about two people running around the High Point neighborhood screaming for help at around 7 am on Saturday, January 7.

When officers got to the home on the 2700 block of Mossy Meadow Drive, they found five deceased people inside the house.

The High Point Police Captain Matt Truitt spoke to local media at a news conference, saying that responding officers went to the home to conduct a welfare check. When they got there, no one was responding, so they had to make a forced entry.

Officers went through the home in what Captain Truitt called a protective sweep to check for anyone in the home. They located five deceased people in the house, including three children and two adults.

Captain Truitt said that four adults were in the home when the unfortunate incident happened, and two of them, who police encountered as they made their way home, had escaped the house to seek help.

The terrified pair, a man and a woman, ages 25 and 22, were questioned by investigators about the incident and released.

The police captain confirmed that there was no threat to the community.

When the two adults left the house, they went to a neighbor’s house and tried to get help. The neighbor, called 911 after the screaming pair woke her up by frantically ringing the doorbell at her house, said she was stunned when she saw them.

The neighbor was unsure what to do as she had never been in such a situation, so she decided not to open the door for the pair and instead opted to call 911. She wanted to leave it up to the police to handle as she did not want to get caught up in a situation that would put her or her family’s life at risk.

Another neighbor, Shellie Macmillan, who lives just around the corner, said that her son encountered numerous police officers at the home at around 8 am while riding his bicycle.

Police determined that a mentally unstable man opened fire on his family and then killed himself. The victims were identified as the shooter Robert J. Crayton Jr., 45, his wife Athalia A. Crayton, 46, his son Kasin Crayton, 18, and two other children, who were 16 and 10.

High Point police officers said they had previously responded to the home five other times since 2014. The shooter was involuntarily committed for psychiatric care by his family on January 3 due to mental illness.