Neighbors Call Roseville Apartment Murders 'Horrifying'
ROSEVILLE (CBS13) — Police revealed new details about the man accused of murdering four members of his own family, then admitting to the crime.
Police said 53-year-old Shankar Hangud is in the Placer County Jail. Hangud drove several hours north to Mount Shasta where he confessed at the local police department yesterday.
Roseville police said he had a body in his car. The three other victims were discovered inside an apartment off Junction Boulevard. Two of the victims are adults and two of them are kids. Police did not elaborate on the victims' ages.
The Superintendent of Dry Creek Joint Elementary School District, Brad Tooker, did issue a statement Tuesday to families, informing the community they believe one of the victims was a student at Silverado Middle School. The statement read, "It is with a heavy heart I inform you, pending confirmation from authorities, we believe one of the victims in the Carmel at Woodcreek West apartment complex homicide may have been one of our treasured Silverado Middle School students."
This has been hard for people in Roseville to make sense of, that a quiet area could become a crime scene. Police are giving very few details about how the four victims were killed and when they were killed. An officer said the department needs the community's help putting a timeline together.
"It's unthinkable. Who knows what triggered him, obviously something did," said Victor Nava, a neighbor.
Police have interviewed Hangud but are not yet elaborating on a possible motive in this case.
"There's a lot of stones that have been unturned that these detectives still need to look into before making a real determination about what the motivation was," said Roseville Police Captain Josh Simon.
Police don't know why Hangud drove all the way to Mount Shasta and had a body in his car, but they're trying to find out if there could be more victims.
"Detectives are trying to backtrack and see if there are any other crimes scenes along the path or whatever direction the suspect took to get to the Mount Shasta Police department," Simon said.
Simon said the murders could have happened over the span of a week or just a few days. He couldn't say anything about how the victims were killed.
"I think a lot of this information is going to be pending results from the autopsy or coroner's office," Simon said.
Meantime, people living right next to this complex are still trying to process what happened.
"That's scary. There's three dead people five houses down from me and I just now got the chills and its not even cold outside," said Dakota Middleton, a neighbor.
