Police on Monday said a southwest man killed two members of his family and injured two others before turning the gun on himself following a domestic dispute.
Officers arrived at a home in the 3500 block of West 79th Place at about 8:55 a.m., police said, and found two men outside with non-life threatening injuries, one who had been beaten and the other with a gunshot wound to the leg.
As the officers approached the victims, they heard shots inside the home, police said.
"I heard what I thought were firecrackers," a neighbor told NBC 5. "Five shots. I thought, 'OK, it's summertime. This is what happens. It's summer.'"
The officers secured the scene and notified SWAT teams who entered the home and found the bodies of two women -- Nicole Loving, 23, and LaQuisha Hickman, 37 -- with fatal gunshot wounds. Edward Prince was found with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
"We are all family," said Sheila Prince, the alleged shooter's cousin. "This doesn't happen with us. We see it on TV, but this is not how we are."
Prince said it all started with a domestic dispute Sunday night. She said her cousin came back to the home and started firing. Prince said he shot and killed Hickman, who was his longtime girlfriend, and her sister, Nicole Lovely, before turning the gun on himself.
"[We] knew how he was, but we never knew he would do this," Prince said.
She said everyone involved was related.
"What happened in that house is what my cousin did," Prince said. "Bottom line, it had nothing to do with gang violence."
