In a heartbreaking story a little too close to home for some, a Philadelphia area man and father of a toddler who had recently received a life-saving heart transplant shot himself, his wife, his children and their family dog in their home.
Police found the bodies of Mark Short, 40, his wife, Megan Short and all of his children: 8-year-old Lianna, 5-year-old Mark Jr. and 2-year-old Willow on August 6th. It was the same day that the family would have moved into their new home in Sinking Spring PA, about 50 miles away from their current location. Mark Short had just taken all three of his children to an amusement park just three days earlier for a family work day.When the police discovered their bodies, the children were still in their pajamas. The family dog had also been shot.
Investigators found a hand-written murder-suicide note on the Short's dining room table. The note seemed to indicate that Short had written it before he killed his family -- it stated that he had bought the gun, and committed the crime of his own free-will. Authorities declined to provide other details concerning what else was included in the letter. A later autopsy indicated that Short's gunshot would was self-inflicted.
District Attorney, John Adams, told reporters that he had little details on why Mark Short committed the crime, and alluded that it may have had something to do with his failing marriage and rocky relationship with wife, Megan Short. "I don't know that we know specifically as to why this relationship had disintegrated. We don't have any answers to that," Adams said, "Suffice it to say based upon our investigation ... we can tell you he was going through a breakup of a marriage and he was emotional about that, but that's all we can tell you."
Friends of the family stated that Short had had a rough relationship with his family leading up to the attack. He was recently demoted at his job as a loan officer, and had been accused of domestically abusing Megan Short on a Facebook post.
This tragedy is not the first time the Short Family has made national headlines. In 2014, they had been featured in various new outlets speaking out about their daughter Willow, a then 1-year-old who had been one of the youngest successful recipients of a heart transplant in world history. They were even featured in the New York Times in late 2014.
The only thing we can learn from this tragedy is that leaving an abusive relationship is an incredibly dangerous time for those suffering from abuse. Together, we need to give survivors the care and resources they need, before something as awful as this happens again.
