Authorities arrested a suspect on suspicion of murder after four people were found shot to death in an east Texas apartment on Sunday, police said.
In a statement, Beaumont Police identified the suspect as Lively James Sutton, 22.
The victims were identified as Bobby Wyatt, 39; Shannon Sutton, 23; Alvin Lee Bellard, 32; and Elijah Rideau, 33, all of Beaumont.
Earlier, police spokeswoman Carol Riley told reporters that Sutton was a person of interest. Detectives were still investigating a possible motive, she said.
The bodies were discovered when a police officer patrolling an area south of downtown Beaumont heard several gunshots shortly after noon local time, she said.
In a nearby apartment, the officer discovered four people who’d been shot, she said. Two of them were pronounced dead at the scene. Another two died at a local hospital, Riley said.
She added that the neighborhood where the shooting occurred was still reeling from Tropical Storm Imelda, which left five people dead across the region earlier this month. Two of the deaths were in Beaumont, a city of 118,000 east of Houston.
“To have such a heinous crime take place in this community — there are no words,” she said, adding: “This is just adding so much misery to people who have already lost so much.”