A family of five was found shot to death at an Indiana mobile home on Friday. The incident, which involved a man, woman, and three young girls, was a murder-suicide, according to police.
Police in Lake Station, about 40 miles southeast of Chicago, said on Friday, Feb. 21 that officers had discovered “five deceased individuals” while conducting a welfare check at a mobile home on 9th Avenue at about 2:45 p.m. that day.
The following day, the Lake County Coroner’s Office identified the victims as 27-year-old Briana Payne and her three daughters: 7-year-old Aurorah Tatiana, 6-year-old Ava Denise and 4-year-old Alayna Jai. Their deaths have been ruled homicides by gunshot wound.
The children’s father, Robert Payne, 31, was also found dead at the scene, with authorities ruling it a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Lake Station police said.
Briana’s mother, Lili Owens, told ABC Chicago that Briana had informed her husband that she wanted a divorce in the days leading up to the shootings.
Cathryn Presley, a former supervisor of Briana’s, also told the outlet that the victim’s husband had tried to isolate her from the people around her.
“Anybody that wanted to get close to her or the kids, [Robert Payne] wanted to create isolation,” she said. “We all knew that there were red flags.”
A neighbor, Sandy Goodman, told WSAZ she’d heard arguing in the days before the killings, and that she knew something was amiss when “the cars weren’t moved, and they go [out] every day.”
According to Briana’s mother, Lili Owens, her daughter was a secretary for the parent-teacher organization and “went out of her way to help anybody, anytime, anywhere, whatever they needed,” she recalled to ABC Chicago.
A GoFundMe appeal to raise money for the mother and daughters’ funerals describes Briana Payne as a “loving mother and incredible caregiver” to her own mother, as well as in her work at Sandra Lee’s In-Home Care.
The page notes that Briana’s daughters were her most important priority, reading, “Aurorah, Ava, and Alayna were her heart and soul — her reason for everything.”
