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Mom was leaving dad the day family found dead, report says

A gun was found near one but police will not divulge who, nor who they suspect of being the shooter.

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Investigators admitted that the couple had had “domestic issues” before the killing.

Police discovered the bodies when a family member called, concerned that Megan had not shown up for a scheduled lunch date, officials said.

Mark and Megan Short had spoken publicly in both the local press in 2014 and in the New York Times in 2015 about the struggles they experienced after their youngest, Willow, was diagnosed at birth with a congenital heart defect.

A week ago, Short posted a Facebook request for help moving out of the home she and her husband shared.

A Berks County couple, who were featured in news stories about their difficulties getting medication for their youngest daughter who had a heart transplant, were found shot to death in their home along with their three children in “an apparent tragic domestic incident”, authorities said.

A recent photo posted on Mark Short Sr.’s Facebook page shows him with his three children.

Adams said a handwritten note that “appeared to be a “murder-suicide” note” was found in the family’s home Saturday afternoon.

“I just got sick”, Burke told the Eagle.

Burke said she met Short through neighborhood events such as the annual Christmas ornament exchange or Halloween parties, and they kept in contact, mostly through Facebook.

Burke provided screengrabs of the July 23 online conversation to the paper, in which Megan Short commented on an article Burke posted by author Leigh Stein entitled, “He didn’t hit me”. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world to have her as my wife and the mother of my three awesome children”.

The officers’ investigation revealed there had been “domestic issues” between Megan and Mark Short.

Willow, who was born with a congenital heart defect, had survived a heart transplant at just 1 week old.

Short had hoped to move to Yardley in Bucks County, the Eagle said. According to the Berks County District Attorney’s office, this led officers to be dispatched to 51 Winding Brook Drive to conduct a welfare check on the Short family.

“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 said. “She talked about the emotional roller-coaster of caring for a sick child because she wanted other parents of sick children to know they weren’t alone”.

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“There’s a ring-tone some people have on their phones that sounds exactly like the code-bell on Weston’s floor”, she says of the electronic hospital alarm that summons help when a child is having a cardiac emergency.

Family of 5 die in apparent murder-suicide outside Reading