Police in two metro Phoenix cities were investigating the shooting deaths of a man and a woman early Dec. 22.
When Phoenix police stopped a car on the 900 block of West Paseo Street at 2:25 a.m, the driver fled and barricaded himself in a nearby home. Phoenix’s SWAT unit, called the Special Assignments Unit, then arrived at the home, near Seventh Avenue and Dobbins Road, and began hostage negotiations with the man inside.
During those negotiations, the man apparently shot himself, according to a Phoenix Police Department news release. Members of the team rushed in to render aid, and Phoenix paramedics rushed him to a nearby hospital, where he died, police said.
A young child remained unharmed in the car that had been pulled over. Police turned over the child to agents of the Arizona Department of Child Safety for protective care.
Investigators later learned the car had been taken from a home in Avondale and the dead man had fled in it with the child after a shooting.
Avondale police were investigating what happened when the child was taken, according to Phoenix police.
About an hour after the Phoenix traffic stop, at 3:36 a.m., police responded to reports of a woman dead in the street near 75th Avenue and Lower Buckeye Road.
Officers arrived to find a woman with multiple gunshot wounds. Phoenix firefighters pronounced her dead at the scene, near the 7100 block of West Pioneer Street.
The woman was later identified as 30-year-old Selena Felix, Phoenix police reported. The department identified the dead man as 23-year-old Alexis Torres.
Police were conducting a murder-suicide investigation.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Child is safe after murder-suicide, Phoenix police say