Memphis police identified the four adults who were found slain in small brick house on Monday.
Police had forced their way into the a house and discovered the bodies of four adults and two children, as well as three children found clinging to life.
Police Lt. Joe Scott said the slain victims identified were: Cecil Dotson, 30; Hollis Seals, 33; Shindri Roberson, 20; and Marissa Rene Williams, 26.
The deceased children's identities were withheld. Police also would not identify the three injured youngsters. Children, ages 7, 4 and 10 months, were taken to Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center.
Dotson's family members said that Dotson was killed in the home, along with Williams, who was his girlfriend. Family said the five children in the attack were Dotson's.
The connection of the other two adults remained unknown.
Family kept to themselves
Authorities were called to the house by a relative who knocked on the door around 6 p.m. Monday but did not get an answer.
Detectives and crime scene specialists were still at the scene late Monday night and authorities cordoned off a block in either direction.
Dark, narrow streets in the low-income working class neighborhood, still wet from heavy rains, showed little signs of life late Monday except for the flashing lights of police cars.
Wayne Bolden, who lives across the street from the scene of the shooting, said that the adult male occupant of the house periodically fired shots in his yard.
"He'd shoot on the Fourth of July and New Year's Eve," Bolden said. "He'd have company over and I'd hear the shots."
He said the family there kept to themselves, but he would see four or five children from the house riding bicycles occasionally.
"It's a pretty quiet neighborhood; nothing of this magnitude has ever happened here," Bolden said.