Emergency services at the scene in Broken Arrow, a suburb of Tulsa in Oklahoma
(Picture: Ian Maule/Tulsa World via AP)A murder investigation has been launched after eight bodies were found in a burning house in Oklahoma.
The fire in the city of Broken Arrow, 13 miles south east of Tulsa, was reported at roughly 4pm on Thursday.
Broken Arrow police said the deaths were being treated as homicides but they did not believe there was an immediate threat to the public.
Neighbors told the police that a family of two adults and six children lived at the home.
Authorities said it was a large fire with “a lot of moving parts.”
“BAPD continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident. It is a complex scene given the state of the house due to the fire damage,” the police department wrote on Twitter.
A police press conderence with more details on the fire will be held on Friday morning.
Catelin Powers said she was driving with her children when she saw a column of smoke near her house, so she drove to investigate.
“When I got closer to the house, I saw smoke pouring out from the very top of the house, which looked like maybe the attic,” she told The Associated Press.
Two men and a woman on her phone were standing in front of the house, Powers said, when another man emerged from the front door dragging an apparently unconscious, unresponsive woman. “Her arms were flopped to her sides,” she said.
“She was in either very short shorts or underwear and a tight shirt,” Power said. She described the woman as having a tan complexion “and looked maybe to be mid-twenties.”
Suspecting the woman was dead, Powers said she drove on so her children would be spared the sight.
Lisa Ford, a city councilor in Broken Arrow, told the New York Times on Thursday night that any type of violence in Broken Arrow is “definitely out of the norm.”
“I would just like to ask people to pray,” she said.
Broken Arrow is Tulsa’s biggest suburb, with almost 115,000 residents.
The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is also involved in the investigation.
