ST. LOUIS COUNTY _ Five adults were found dead inside an apartment building in north St. Louis County Saturday afternoon in an apparent homicide, St. Louis County Police said.
The adults were inside the building Friday night and a sixth person who was with them left, returned at about noon Saturday, and discovered them dead, said Officer Tracy Panus.
Police would not say the gender or ages of the victims, but said they were all adults. They would not say how they think the victims died but did say they were homicides. They were working on identifying the victims and their families.
"Somebody out there knows what happened," said St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, who was at the scene Saturday afternoon with Panus and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell. They asked that anyone with information call police.
"As you know, one homicide is too many," Belmar said. "Any time we have a scene like this where it is what appears to be five victims of a homicide, it rocks a community."
Police said they did not know why the victims were there together and would not talk about any possible evidence left at the scene.
A crying woman at the scene said police told her that five people had been killed, and one of them was her fiance. Police told her there had been a fight, she said.
At least part of the building had been previously boarded up, and yellow crime scene tape was around the building parking lot. Not all of the units are vacant, police said.
Family members at the scene identified one of the victims as Ronald Brewster, 40. They said he had been staying at the apartment and had been involved in drugs. Brewster's father, also named Ronald, had gone to the apartment Friday night to try to convince him to come home.
He returned Saturday morning to pick him up for a family reunion at Tilles Park in west St. Louis County. He opened the door, saw the bodies on the floor, closed the door and called police because he knew his handprint was on the doorknob, said Lonetta Brewster, the victim's sister.
Family members, some wearing purple family reunion T-shirts, consoled one another and cried at the scene on Saturday.
The death toll makes this among the worst mass killings in St. Louis history. Among others:
_On Sept. 4, 1987, two gunmen killed five people and wounded two others at a National Supermarket store on Natural Bridge in north St. Louis.
_On Feb. 7, 2008, Charles "Cookie" Thornton fatally shot five people and wound two others at Kirkwood City Hall. One of the wounded, Mayor Mike Swoboda later died of his injuries.
_On Jan. 7, 2010, an ABB Power employee killed three people and wounded five others, then killed himself.
According to property records, the owner of the complex is Zen Kiara LLC, which has an O'Fallon, Mo., mailing address. A representative of the company could not immediately be reached.
