Five found dead in South Side home

Authorities found five people dead Wednesday inside a ransacked house on the city's South Side, escalating the body count for an already violent spring for Chicago residents and police.

It appeared the three men and two women had been shot, but investigators were waiting for the Cook County medical examiner's office to confirm a cause of death, said Chief of Detectives Thomas Byrne. Autopsies were scheduled for Thursday, the medical examiner's office said.

"This is very serious," Byrne said at a news conference near the two-story house. "There's five victims. There's five families right now that are grieving over this."

The victims' identities were not immediately released. All the victims were in their 20s, and they all knew each other, said Deputy Chief Eugene Williams.

The incident was reported about 3:45 p.m. Wednesday after a woman attempting to visit the house found the bodies, said police spokeswoman Monique Bond.

There were signs of forced entry into the house, which appeared to have been ransacked, Williams said.

Police did not have any offenders in custody but they did not believe a murderer was on the loose and it was possible the victims knew the offender, Bond said.

"We don't think that the neighbors need to worry," she said. "We believe that it's been contained inside this residence, and right now detectives are on the scene talking to neighbors and trying to get as much information as possible to follow up on leads."

Investigators cordoned off a section of the residential street as neighbors milled around, talked in groups and watched.

Vanessa Mathis, whose mother lives across the street from the house where the bodies were discovered, said the neighborhood has many older residents and is not a crime-ridden area.

"We've never had anything like this to happen before," Mathis said.

The past few weeks have been bloody in Chicago after a spate of shootings.

Nine people were killed in 36 shootings last weekend, one of Chicago's first spring-like stretches of weather this year.

One man died and three others were wounded, including one of the alleged offenders, in shootings that took place late Monday in a South Side McDonald's restaurant parking lot.

The recent violence followed a six-month period during which more than 20 Chicago public school students were shot to death.