Blood pooling in the doorway of a central Little Rock home led police officers to the bodies of three women who were shot Thursday afternoon in front of a number of children, a police spokesman said.
A 911 caller at 2:04 p.m. asked Little Rock police to check on the residents at 4601 W. 16th St., spokesman Lt. Michael Ford said. When officers arrived, Ford said, they saw blood dripping from beneath the front door of the small, white house and opened the door, where they found the women.
Ford later said several children had been found uninjured in the home and were removed. The number of children, their identities and whether they were related to the victims was not immediately released.
The women -- whose ages and names had not been released late Thursday -- had been shot and were dead when officers arrived, he said.
A man who was at the property when officers arrived was taken in for questioning as a person of interest, Ford said. The relationship of the person of interest to the women was not immediately released, nor was the man identified. Ford said it was too early in the investigation to know what led up to the shooting.
"We have our homicide and crime-scene investigators out here and we are doing some door-to-door to try to see if anybody heard or saw anything," Ford said.
By 3 p.m., neighbors had begun crowding around and children rode bicycles and scooters back and forth across the street as police officers gathered at the corner of West 16th Street and Cone Lane.
A pair of black tennis shoes was sitting beside the house's front door, near an open kitchen window and the drying puddle of blood that marred the house's white paneling.
Gary Hogan, who owns a rental property across the street from 4601 W. 16th St., said he saw several kids playing in the house's yard less than an hour before police arrived.
"We were out here in the yard waiting on the handyman," Hogan said. "We were sitting on the tailgate and there were five, six kids playing in the yard."
Hogan said he'd seen one of the children playing in the yard the day before. The girl with a big bow in her hair -- Hogan estimated she was about 6 years old -- had wandered over to his yard on Wednesday, he said.
"I saw her again today, and I think she had the same bow in her hair," Hogan said. "There were a bunch of kids in the yard and one woman. She was standing in front of them and teaching them a dance."
Hogan said he and his business partner had left the home for about 45 minutes Thursday afternoon. When he returned, police officers surrounded the house.
As Hogan spoke, a woman began to scream.
The woman wearing a pink and yellow dress was running from her car toward the house screaming, "My babies, my babies."
As she got closer, officers told her she could not go inside the house, saying they had to preserve the crime scene. Holding a cellphone in her hands, the woman told police she'd called her daughter over and over but couldn't get her to answer.
"How can I calm down?" the woman yelled, wiping her face. "That's my daughter in there. Let me go see. I can identify her."
The officer shook his head as a little boy rode past them on a bike.
As the crime-scene technicians carried a large red ladder inside the home, the crowd grew to more than 50 people and officers moved the police tape back a block to keep onlookers away . From time to time a family member would rush to the front of the crowd.
"Where's my grandbabies?" one woman said in a quivering voice as she wiped her eyes. She and another woman, both crying, had pushed to the front of the crowd and spoke to the police officer standing behind the line.
"Let me get someone who can talk to you," the officer said. "They're OK, but we had to clean them up a little bit."
The woman crumpled, thrusting her face into her folded arms.
A neighbor who asked not to be identified said the children had been covered with blood when they were taken away.
The residence is just two blocks from the city's last triple homicide. On Nov. 16, three young people were shot in a car near West 14th and Peyton streets. Joshua Milik Williams, 21, was arrested earlier this year and charged with three counts of first-degree murder.
The women's deaths were the 19th, 20th and 21st homicides of 2019.
Metro on 06/14/2019