Deputies work into the night Saturday at the trailer park near near Graham where the bodies of five children were discovered dead in their home.

Pierce County Sheriff spokesman Ed Troyer called it a domestic violence situation and a murder-suicide.

"We believe they all died of gunshot wounds," Troyer said.

The 7-year-old is a boy, and the other four victims are all girls, officials said.

Police found the father's body in his still-running car near the Muckleshoot Casino in Auburn, about 30 miles south of Seattle, early Saturday. He had apparently killed himself with a rifle, but left no note in the car, Auburn Police Sgt. Scott Near said.

Later in the day, Pierce County deputies checked the mobile home, in the 20400 block of 135th Avenue Court East, and found four of the children dead in their beds and the fifth in the bathroom.

Neighbors in the Deer Run mobile home park, a neat, well-kept community nestled among towering evergreens, were shocked and weeping at the news.

"How could something like this happen?" asked Mary Riplinger, whose kids were playmates of the slain children. "Everyone's asking: Why did he do it? It's not right."

The mother of the victims was not at home, Troyer said. Deputies were called to the mobile home after a relative stopped by and saw a child lying motionless on a bed through a window, but couldn't get anyone to answer the door.

He said investigators believe the husband and wife were not estranged.

"Clearly she's been very traumatized," Troyer told The News Tribune. "You kind of get hardened to seeing people who are killed because of their own bad actions. But these kids died through no fault of their own. This is something you never want to see."

Carolyn Cramer-Bader lives nearby and said the couple often argued, prompting her at one time to call Child Protective Services.

"When I called it was because we would be inside of our home with all the doors shut and everything and we could hear him in his home screaming at his kids," she said.

The mother's aunt, Penny Flansburg, was at a loss to explain the crime.

"They were pleasant together," Flansburg said. "We can't even figure out why."

Flansburg identified the couple as Angela and James Harrison and the children as Maxine, Samantha, Heather, Jamie and James. The father worked as a diesel mechanic, and the mother works at Wal-Mart, Flansburg said.

Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor described the crime as a "horrible thing."

"This was not a tragedy. It was a rotten murder," Pastor said. "This appears to be the terrible work of the biological father. If that doesn't break your heart, I don't know what does."

A classmate of the eldest daughter, Ryan Peden, said she told him Friday night that her parents had gotten into a fight and her mother had left. The father followed the mother and tried to get her to return, said Peden, 16.

Dozens of investigators were at the home trying to reconstruct the crime and discover a motive, but even homicide detectives found the scene hard to take.

"It's pretty rough on all of them," Troyer said. "Right now they're taking some time and working with our chaplains."

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Images from the scene where the children were found: