Orting is a small city located approximately 30 miles (48 km) from Mount Rainier, in Washington State.
The bodies of five children between the ages of 7 and 16 years old and their father were found dead in separate locations south of Seattle, near Orting, police said.
The Pierce County Sheriff's Office said Saturday April 4, 2009, it was investigating the deaths of the children in northwest Washington.
The 7-year-old is a boy, and the other four are girls.
The Pierce County Sheriff's Department said the father is a suspect in the shooting. He allegedly shot his children and then fatally shot himself at another location.
The father's body had been found earlier Saturday in a still-running car near the Muckleshoot Casino in Auburn. He had apparently killed himself with a rifle, but left no note in the car, Auburn Police Sgt. Scott Near said, according to the Seattle Times.
After his body was found, police did a welfare check on his family and found the five children dead, according to Fox News.
Penny Slanasburg and Tammy Dettwiler, both of Tacoma, who identified themselves as aunts of the children's mother, arrived at the mobile-home park Saturday night. They identified the father as James Harrison and the mother as Angela Harrison, and said the couple had been together since Angela was 13.
The children were Maxine, Samantha, Jamie, Heather and James Harrison, they said.
They said Angela works at Wal-Mart and James was a diesel mechanic.
Angela Harrison was with the sheriff's department chaplain Saturday evening, but then went to stay with a family member.
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The incident is among the worst Western Washington mass slayings.
Last September, Isaac L. Zamora went on a shooting rampage that began in Alger in Skagit County that left six people dead and four wounded.
On Christmas Eve of 2007, six family members were shot and killed at their home in Carnation. Michele Kristen Anderson and her boyfriend, Joseph McEnroe, are charged with murdering Anderson's parents, her brother and his wife and two children, ages 3 and 5.
In July 2006, a Kirkland woman and her two children, ages 3 and 5, and the woman's sister were slain in her home. A neighbor, Conner Schierman, has been charged in the slayings and could face the death penalty if he is convicted.
In March 2006, Kyle Huff, 28, shot and killed six people and wounded two others in a Capitol Hill house where a rave after-party had taken place. After the rampage, Huff fatally shot himself, according to the Seattle Times.
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Meanwhile, earlier in the day, April 4, 2009, police officers were killed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Three Pittsburgh police officers responding to a domestic-disturbance call on the morning of Saturday, April 4, 2009, were killed when a man armed with an AK-47 opened fire on them, the police department said.
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