Police responded to the Short family home Saturday afternoon after a relative reported that the mother, Megan, had never made it to a lunch date and was not answering her phone.
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Willow’s parents Megan, 33, and Mark, 40, and siblings Liana, eight, and Mark Jr, five, were also killed, Berks County authorities said, according to the Reading Eagle.
An entire family was found shot to death in their Pennsylvania home on Saturday in what authorities have determined was a murder-suicide.
In April, Megan Short wrote a blog post detailing her experiences with post-traumatic stress in the hope that it would help other parents caring for children with chronic medical issues.
At 6 days old she received a life-saving heart transplant, followed by daily doses of a specialty drug to keep her body from rejecting the transplanted heart.
From the day she was born with a congenital heart defect in May 2014, Willow Short and her family fought for her survival.
The Berks County DA released the following statement on Sunday morning. In 2015, the Shorts and their struggle to obtain anti-rejection medicine for Willow were featured in a New York Times story.
Younger daughter Willow Short underwent a heart transplant in 2014, when she was just one week old. The couple had been having “domestic issues”, District Attorney John Adams said. A handwritten note was left in the home, leading investigators to believe this was an apparent murder-suicide. When the family’s neighbor, Angie Burke, posted a Washington Post article to Facebook “He didn’t hit me”. Short commented on the link, Burke said, writing that it was the reason why she was leaving her marriage. The page’s description called her “one wonderful little miracle who beat the odds”.
A Pennsylvania mom found dead with her husband and three young children in an apparent murder-suicide had told friends she planned to leave him.
“Megan anxious at the end each month that her daughter’s drug supply would run out before it could be refilled, The Times reported”. She shared that certain smells or sounds would trigger her anxiety.
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“I don’t think PTSD ever truly goes away but, with therapy, medication, and the right support, I have begun to loosen its grip on me”, she wrote.
