WEST HAVEN, Utah — A memorial with flowers and stuffed animals continues to grow on the porch steps of a West Haven home where a woman and three children were found dead inside a vehicle just two days ago.
Heavy hearts fill the neighborhood as many questions are still left to be answered. While the Weber County Sheriff's Office has scheduled an update for Friday morning, the community is still trying to process what happened.
"It's just something that don't normally happen, stuff like that," said neighbor Michael McGuire. "You hear about it on TV and stuff like that, but in your neighborhood where you live?"
Nothing was out of the ordinary Tuesday in McGuire's neighborhood. That's when a family member found the bodies of a 32-year-old woman and three children all under the age of 5 in a car parked in the driveway. In the hours following the discovery, the sheriff's office said it appeared that the bodies had suffered from gunshot wounds.
The woman's brother, Christian, told FOX 13 News that the family does not know how the incident happened, saying his sister was a caring and genuine mother whose children were her life.
"Shocked more than anything else because we had no idea. This is a pretty quiet neighborhood," added McGuire.
When tough incidents happen in any community, many wonder how to talk about them with children? Experts says it's okay to not have all the answers, but just to be there for your children.
"It's really normal to feel lots of different emotions when those big events happen," said Heather Shotwell with Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital. "Some kids might feel scared, some kids might feel nervous or worried, some kids might feel angry, and its important for parents to really create a space that validates and normalizes those feelings for their children."
The sheriff's office remains steadfast that there is no threat to public safety or to the neighborhood. Michael tells me he never saw this coming.
"I think it was a lone incident, had nothing to do with anything else around here," McGuire said.
Officials urge anyone struggling to process the tragedy to seek out resources such as the 988 Lifeline and the SafeUT app to help deal with situations such as what occurred in West Haven.
