A 35-year-old man apparently shot and killed five of his underage children in a mobile home park near the town of Graham in Washington before committing suicide, local police said on Saturday. 

Domestic abuse case

Children aged from to 16 years were found dead in their mobile home in the afternoon hours, while the father was found a little later in the nearby town of Auburn. He had been found in his car where he killed himself, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office spokesman, Ed Troyer, said, The Seattle Times reported.

Troyer said the investigators believed that the father had killed the children and they described the murders as a case of domestic violence. Four of the children were found in bedrooms and the fifth in the bathroom. Of the five children, four were girls and one was a seven-year-old boy.

- There's nothing that leads us to believe it wasn't gunshot wounds and it wasn't the father – Troyer said.

Fifth mass murder in a month

The identities of the father and the children have not been revealed. The authorities said that the mother had been located. She was not in the house at the time of the murders and she spend Saturday evening with the police chaplain, the paper reported.

Neighbours from the mobile home park told The Seattle Times that the family kept pretty much to themselves and that the father was very strict with the children. But they are tormented by the question “why the children, why did he kill the children?”

This incident is the fourth mass murder in the west part of the state of Washington in the past three weeks.

In the United States, it is the fifth mass murder ending in a suicide in the past month, with more than 45 victims.

The killings are being connected to poverty caused by the economic crisis 

The economic crisis, which subjects many Americans to dangers of losing jobs, their savings, homes, health and pension insurance, is linked to the increase of mass murders with suicides recently.

A day before the tragic family murders in Graham, a Vietnamese immigrant who lost his job barged into the offices of the organisation that helps immigrants assimilate and killed 13 people and himself and wounded four others.