Avon PD: Mother killed 7-year-old son before taking her own life

AVON, Ind. (WISH) — Avon police are investigating the deaths of two people found inside a home Sunday morning as a murder-suicide.

Police on Sunday night said Manisha Singhal, 41, shot and killed her son, 7-year-old Shiv Patel, before taking her own life.

Officers were called to a home on Preekness Drive in the Lexington Woods neighborhood around 11 a.m. Sunday to conduct a welfare check after receiving a call that a person who lived at the home had failed to show up somewhere earlier in the morning. The neighborhood is east of Dan Jones Road and south of East County Road 100 South.

The officers went into the home and found two people deceased inside, according to Avon Deputy Chief Brian Nugent.

A preliminary investigation indicates that the incident is a murder-suicide, Nugent said at the scene.

Crime scene investigators with Indiana State Police were assisting Avon at the scene, and the investigation was expected to continue there for several more hours, Nugent said.

Avon police believed the incident to be isolated and that there was no larger-scale threat to the public, Nugent said.