NATION : Mother Kills 4 Children, Herself

MENDON, Ill. — A woman drowned her oldest daughter in a bathtub, lined three other children up on a couch and shot them to death, then killed herself, authorities said.

The bodies were discovered when the father, Greg Epker, returned home from work Wednesday at a sign company in nearby Quincy, authorities said. Epker, 32, found that his oldest daughter, 8-year-old Casey, had been drowned; that daughters Shannon, 5, and Mandy, 2, and his son, Lance, 1, had been shot, and that his wife, Sheila, 27, had shot herself, Sheriff Robert Nall said. Epker is being treated for shock at St. Mary’s Hospital in Quincy. “At this point, we have found no motive,” Nall said.