Police in Minnesota say that two deadly incidents, one at an in-home daycare in the city of Hopkins and another in nearby Burnsville, are linked and together left four members of the same family dead. Officials from both cities appeared at a joint news conference to explain the connection, stressing that they do not believe there is any ongoing threat to the wider community as their investigation continues.
In Hopkins, officers responded to a report of a stabbing shortly after nine o'clock in the morning at an in-home daycare. When they arrived, they found three people dead inside: a 41-year-old man, a 41-year-old woman and a 7-year-old girl. Authorities described the three as one family unit, a mother, a father and a child, whose deaths turned an ordinary daycare setting into the scene of a devastating tragedy.
According to police, the woman and the young girl died of stab wounds, while the man, identified as the suspect in the case, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Investigators said no note was left behind and that they had not established a motive, adding that they had no prior police contact with the daycare or the family before the killings took place.
Crucially, six other children were present at the in-home daycare at the time of the attack. All of them were unharmed and were removed from the home to be reunited with their own parents. Officials said the daycare was located in a basement area of the house, which was where the other children were and where the altercation is believed to have taken place, and that a parent arriving to drop off a child came upon the scene.
The second, connected incident unfolded in Burnsville, south of the Twin Cities. At around 12:23 in the afternoon, Burnsville police were dispatched to a report of a stabbing at a home near Maple Island Road and Joplin Avenue, where they found a 78-year-old woman dead from stab wounds. A family member had called officers to report the scene, and the victim is believed to be a close relative of the suspect.
Investigators said the suspect had recently been living at the Burnsville residence, and they believe the killing there happened before the events at the Hopkins daycare. While police were still assembling a precise timeline between the two scenes, they were confident that the same suspect was responsible for both, tying the loss of the 78-year-old woman to the deaths of the family in Hopkins.
The mayor of Hopkins, Patrick Hanlon, described the city as a tight-knit community that had shed many tears over the loss of a mother, a young child and the trauma inflicted on the children who may have witnessed the scene. He said a vigil was being planned, thanked the many agencies and first responders involved, and noted that other daycares had already offered to take in the affected families' children free of charge.
