In Detroit, police said they discovered three men dead inside a home after they went there while looking for a missing person. Assistant Police Chief Charles Fitzgerald said the three victims were ages 65, 66 and 72, and that investigators believed they had been attacked late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
Fitzgerald described the scene as violent and said investigators saw evidence consistent with bludgeoning and stabbing. He told reporters, “It was a brutal scene inside — just awful,” and he said investigators were continuing their work to determine what led to the deaths.
Police said they were seeking tips and searching for a suspect, while noting that a motive was not immediately known. Fitzgerald also said authorities would not confirm speculation from neighbors about drugs being used at the location.
Fitzgerald told reporters that the bodies were “left in a basement area covered in dirty clothing; one person was covered with a carpet,” describing the conditions in which the men were found. He also said the man who lived at the location “opened up his house to a lot of folks” and that “They come and go,” describing a steady stream of visitors to the home.
A neighbor, Thomas Barnes, told a local outlet that one of the men was a veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Barnes also said he was president of his block club and that the group had recently changed its name, telling The Detroit News that it is now called Harmony Village.
Police did not identify the victims in the report, and authorities said they were still working to piece together what happened before the killings.