Deaths of 4 Adults, 2 Children Found in Southwest Side Home Ruled Homicide

Family members said the people who lived in the home were a couple, their son, their daughter, and their daughter's two children

The deaths of six family members whose bodies were found inside a Southwest Side Chicago home Thursday have been declared homicides, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

The medical examiner's office has not officially released the identities of the bodies, but autopsy results showed the cause of death for the victims, all of which have been ruled a homicide.  

According to the autopsy report, the victims died of multiple sharp and blunt force injuries due to assault, except for a middle-aged female, who died of multiple gunshot wounds. 

Family members said the people who lived in the home were a couple, their son, their daughter, and their daughter's two children. 

They identified the deceased as Rosa Hernandez, Noe Martinez, Noe Martinez Jr., Herminia Martinez and her two children, Alexis and Leonardo. Crosses bearing each name were placed outside the home as a memorial Friday.

The two children were 10 and 13 years old, police said.

"They were a normal family. Everything was fine," Noemi Martinez, 29, said from Dallas during a phone interview in Spanish. She said her husband was a nephew and cousin of the home's residents.

Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Eugene Roy said Friday that all of the victims suffered blunt trauma.

Investigators Friday would not say whether the crime was targeted, but did say the community was not facing an active threat.

"I would understand that people would have a heightened sense of concern but really there is nothing at this point that leads us to believe that this was a random act that this was somebody that broke into the house," Interim Chicago Police Superintendent John Escalante said.

Officers conducting a welfare check discovered the bodies of two women, two men and two children around 1:30 p.m. Thursday on the 5700 block of South California. A concerned co-worker called police after one of the men found in the home had not showed up to work for two days.

Investigators were working Friday to piece together what exactly happened inside the small brick home tucked away in a typically quiet neighborhood near 57th Street and California Avenue. Asked whether it could have been a murder-suicide, Escalante told reporters it was "a possibility."

Police said in a Friday morning news conference there had been no sign of forced entry and all the doors had been locked when officers arrived.

"It's a rather complex scene," Roy said. 

Police have revealed few details on a potential motive in the case, but said there is no threat to the community.

Friends told NBC5 the victims were a "good family" from Mexico with no known problems.

Martinez said the father worked at a factory in Chicago and the mother was a housewife. They were originally from the Mexican state of Guanajuato and had lived in Chicago for about a decade, Martinez said.

"Right now, we just want to know who did this," she said. "They didn't deserve this. We don't understand what happened."

Azcucena Martinez, who goes by Susy and is the niece of the couple, created a GoFundMe page to help the family send the bodies back to Mexico. As of Friday, the page had received more than $17,000. 

"There was never any problems so we couldn't even think something happened to them," said neighbor Mayra Diego. "They were very nice quiet people."

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