California man kills daughter, three other children and himself

MERCED, Calif. (AP) -- A man shot his 5-year-old daughter and his ex-wife's three other children to death Tuesday, then turned the gun on himself while the woman was on her morning walk, authorities said.

Christine McFadden returned from her walk in an affluent suburb of Merced shortly after 7 a.m. to find her 17-year-old daughter lying dead in the hallway near her bedroom, Merced County Sheriff's Sgt. Tom Cavallero said.

McFadden called police from a neighbor's house and returned to find her three other children and her ex-husband lying in separate bedrooms dead with gunshot wounds, Cavallero said.

"It looks like they had been sleeping," Cavallero said of the children.

The man's body was found in the bed of the master bedroom, holding the 5-year-old in his arms. The others, including a 15-year-old boy and a 14-year-old boy, were not his children.

The couple had been divorced for about a year and the man, whose name was not immediately released, was living in Kern County, near Bakersfield, Cavallero said.

The shooting took place in the Robinson Estates on the east side of Merced.