The Reading Eagle reports that Megan Short alleged abuse and posted on Facebook that she needed help moving out of the family’s home in Sinking Spring home Saturday, the day authorities discovered the family shot dead.
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Megan and her husband Mark, 40, were parents to Liana, 8, Mark, 5, and Willow, 2. He was reportedly trying to keep his family together.
The family has been in the news before.
An autopsy for Mark Short was scheduled for Monday afternoon by Dr. Neil Hoffman.
Investigators will conduct forensic analysis of evidence taken from the crime scene. “It was still abuse”, that Burke posted on her Facebook page. Burke knew Megan from neighborhood events and they kept in touch through social media.
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”. He was all family.
Robert McLaughlin, Mark Short’s brother-in-law, says he is still reeling from this weekend’s shocking tragedy, but rejected the notion that money troubles provoked the shootings. “It was just work, work, work, and family”. But that didn’t change Megan’s plans, the report noted.
At the same time Megan wasn’t shy about her struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The couple’s youngest daughter, Willow, received a heart transplant soon after her birth and the family struggled to keep up with medical bills. The family was previously covered by the media when Willow had to undergo a risky heart transplant in 2014.
Although the baby was expected to be stillborn, Willow was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and underwent an organ transplant less than a week later. He said he also can’t stop blaming himself for what happened. “There are very few moments when you can clearly see your life as separated into the before and after”, she wrote on the site Philly at Heart”. “I am constantly wondering if the next appointment is when the other shoe will drop”.
Police said they found the bodies of Megan Short, Mark Short Sr. and their children, Lianna, Mark Jr., and Willow, dead in the living room. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families at this hard time”, police said in a statement.
All five family members died of gunshot wounds.
Sunday morning, the one officer at the police department there told FOX 29’s Steve Keeley details may be released Monday by Berks County District Attorney John Adams.
He says there is a “zero percent chance” they were “financially driven” and says both of the family’s affected by Saturday’s shootings will refrain from commenting until after the funerals for all five Shorts.
A handwritten note was found in the home, leading authorities to conclude the deaths were the result of a murder-suicide.
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A spokesman tells PEOPLE that the Berks County District Attorney’s Office is refraining from commenting further on Saturday’s deaths until the investigation is completed.
