Four family members dead, 1 injured after shooting at home near Crystal Lake

Four family members, including three women and a male "aggressor," were killed Wednesday at a home in an unincorporated area near Crystal Lake, according to the McHenry County sheriff's office.

Sheriff's deputies were called to a home on Wild Plum Road early Wednesday morning after receiving a 911 call about a "single household member shooting their relatives," police said. One woman, who made the call to 911, survived the attack but was seriously injured and is being treated at a hospital, Deputy Tim Creighton said.

Creighton declined to say how the people were killed, how old they are or what weapon was involved. He said they all were residents of the home.

A tweet sent from the McHenry County sheriff's office later Wednesday referred to the three dead women and the woman who made the 911 call as family members.

In an earlier Facebook post, the sheriff's office said deputies had responded to "reports of multiple gunshots fired." A news release said they responded at 3:50 a.m.

Speaking with reporters, Creighton said the three women were dead when deputies arrived at the home. One man, who Creighton described as "the aggressor," was seriously injured and later died, he said.

Sheriff Robb Tadelman said it was an isolated incident and there is no danger to the public.

The McHenry County sheriff's office, in conjunction with the Major Investigation Assistance Team, is handling the investigation, according to the release. While the majority of police vehicles at the scene were from the McHenry County sheriff's office, a Fox River Grove police SUV arrived at about 10 a.m.

Neighbors said they hadn't heard anything overnight and awoke to see TV news crews along the street. They said they believed the residents at the townhouse where the shooting took place were renters and that they had lived there for a number of years.

Larry Swanson, a resident who lives down the street, said the neighborhood originally was designed to be part of a golf course. The townhouse is in the Prairie Ridge subdivision, a mix of 53 duplexes and single-family homes along winding tree-lined roads.

Neighbor Sage Brossard, 19, who lives two doors down, said she didn't hear anything happen overnight and that she had never met the family, but she understood there were multiple generations living in the home.

"This is crazy," Brossard said. "I had no idea what was going on."

No update was provided by the McHenry County coroner's office. The sheriff's office said it planned to release further details later in the day.

Peggy Caldrone, a neighbor who has lived nearby in the subdivision since 2013 on the corner of Wild Plum and White Ash roads, said she had her window open and didn't hear anything during the night. She said she woke up at 6:30 a.m. to see cars parked outside her window, referring to police and news vehicles.

"It's surreal," Caldrone said. "You don't often wake up to crime tape outside your windows in the morning. It's just not like real."

She said her family called saying they saw her house on the news and asked if she felt safe living there, which she said she did.

"I feel totally safe," she said. "It is a quiet neighborhood and they [all the people who live there] are so nice."

Holly Cote, a social worker at nearby Prairie Grove School, said her neighborhood is a "tight-knit community."

"It's friendly," she said. "I am hoping and praying there aren't kids involved. I know all of these kids in this neighborhood. They're my kids; they go to my school."

• Daily Herald staff writer Paul Valade contributed to this report.