Police ID 6 family members dead in suspected mass murder-suicide plot at Texas home

ALLEN, Texas — Texas authorities have identified six people found dead Monday in a suburban Dallas home in what police suspect was a mass murder-suicide plot.

Officers responded to the Allen, Texas, home at around 1 a.m. after a family friend reported someone at the home was suicidal and found a family of six dead inside the home, police confirmed to The Dallas Morning News.

Investigators believe brothers Tanvir Towhid, 21, and Farhan Towhid, 19, made a pact to kill their parents, sister and grandmother before killing themselves, The Associated Press reported.

Police identified the four victims as Altafun Nessa, 77; Iren Islam, 56; Towhidul Islam, 54; and Farbin Towhid, 19, The Dallas Morning News reported.

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“Apparently, two brothers made an agreement to commit suicide and ended up taking the entire family with them,” Allen Police Department spokesman Sgt. Jon Felty told the newspaper.

Felty also confirmed that the younger brother wrote a lengthy social media post outlining the plot and noting that pros and cons of their actions had been weighed.

In the post, attributed to both brothers, the pair said that they were both clinically depressed and sought to spare their family any grief caused by their suicides by killing their family members first, KXAS reported.

“We have never had an incident like this in the 21 years that I’ve been here … It’s a tragedy that you just can’t imagine. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family members and friends, and we’re just very sorry that this event occurred,” Felty told the TV station.

Ahmad Hossain, a neighbor who lives about a block from the slain family, told The Dallas Morning News that the family relocated to the neighborhood from New York about seven or eight years ago.

Hossain also said that Nessa, the grandmother, was visiting from Bangladesh, but her return trip that had been scheduled for last week was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Police did confirm late Monday that Tanvir Towhid, the older brother who had withdrawn from the University of Texas in January, legally purchased a gun recently but did not elaborate on the weapons used to carry out the plot, KXAS reported.

-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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