Police said preliminary findings point to a suspected murder-suicide, but investigators have not announced a final determination.
COCOA, Fla. — An adult man and two children were found dead Wednesday inside a Cocoa home, prompting an investigation that police said preliminarily appears to involve a murder-suicide.
Cocoa police officers responded shortly after noon Oct. 7 to a residence at 100 Sorrento Drive in the Lakeside Palms subdivision. Investigators found the three people dead inside the home and began interviewing witnesses and processing the residence for evidence. Police said the circumstances of the deaths had not been officially confirmed.
The Cocoa Police Department said its preliminary findings indicated the deaths may have resulted from a murder-suicide. Authorities described the case as an isolated incident and said there was no active threat to the surrounding community.
Police had not publicly released the names of the man or the two children as of Thursday morning. FOX 35 Orlando initially reported that authorities also had not released the children’s ages. Other local reporting, citing a police spokesperson, said the children were younger than 10. Authorities had not announced an official cause or manner of death for any of the three people.
Investigators spent Wednesday gathering evidence from the home and speaking with people who might help establish what happened before the bodies were discovered. Police said crime scene technicians were processing the residence while detectives worked to establish the sequence of events.
Some neighbors reported hearing sounds they believed were gunshots around midnight, hours before officers arrived. WFTV reported that surveillance video from a nearby home appeared to show a man outside the residence around that time. Police had not publicly identified the person shown in the video or confirmed that the sounds described by neighbors were connected to the deaths.
A Cocoa police spokesperson told WESH that the adult man was presumed to be the children’s father. Police had not publicly confirmed the relationships among all three people in the initial information released about the case. Investigators also had not disclosed a possible motive or said what may have led to the deaths.
The investigation remained active Thursday. Detectives had not announced a final determination about how the three people died, and additional details, including their identities and the complete timeline of events, had not been released.
Author note: Last updated October 8, 2026.