01/06/2009

Associated Press

A couple who hadn't been seen since New Year's Eve have been found dead inside their locked bedroom with their crying 9-month-old daughter, and three older children had been left out on their own.

The bodies of Hannah Crowe, 21, and Julian Wallulatum, 26, were discovered Saturday after the older children asked a neighbor to help.

A preliminary investigation shows Wallulatum shot Crowe in the head with a rifle before shooting himself, Detective Tanner Stanfill said in a statement Monday afternoon. He said the shooting likely occurred sometime Thursday. He said Wallulatum and Crowe were domestic partners and the parents of the 9-month-old.

Crowe's three older children had been playing outside Thursday and Friday so nothing seemed wrong, said neighbor Andrew Smith.

But on Saturday, the kids knocked on his door, led by the oldest, an 8-year-old boy.

"The oldest one said 'I can't wake my mom up. I can't wake my mom and dad up, 'cause I think they're still passed out, but I can see blood on my mom's leg, under the door,' " Smith told KTVZ-TV of Bend.

Smith said he went to the couple's apartment, smelled a foul odor and heard the couple's baby crying. He kicked down the locked bedroom door and found them dead in the same clothes they were wearing New Year's Eve.

The baby was beside them; her shirt stained with their blood.

"My knees, they wobbled," Smith said. "It just took it out of me. I almost fainted."

"How could they leave the babies?" asked neighbor Ashley Barker. "If something was going on, an argument, why didn't they send them to the neighbors?"

Police said the state Department of Human Services took all four children into protective custody. All were examined at Mountain View Hospital and found to be in good condition.

Madras is a town of just over 6,000 people, about 100 miles southeast of Portland.

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Information from: KTVZ-TV, http://www.ktvz.com/