Neighbors react after Winston-Salem mother, 3 children, shot and killed inside home

A North Carolina neighborhood is in shock after a mother and her three children were shot dead inside their home.

Winston-Salem police on Tuesday at noon responded to a call at a home on Brookhill Drive.

Officers forced entry into the home ,where they found 40-year-old Ethel Syretha Steele dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Officers also found three children, two girls and one boy, dead from gunshot wounds.

The children were identified as 9-year-old Sakendra Steele, 12-year-old Sakenya Steele and 14-year-old Sakenlo Steele, Jr.

The shooting brought one neighbor, Quamekia Shavers, who is a mother of three herself, to tears.

"I think all of us went to thinking about kids," she said. "I think it was just a natural parental instinct. You could literally just see all of us break down. You could see our hearts fall into our stomachs."

Police spent hours investigating the scene.

Neighbors said it's something they never expected to hear, especially in an area they've grown to love.

"This community is, I consider it a little gem here, a nice place to live," Shavers said. "We have a lot of elderly individuals in this community that walk early in the morning and leaving late at night and something like that, you just don't imagine it will happen or that it would be that close."