Three adults were found dead with apparent gunshot wounds in a Fair Oaks-area apartment in Fairfax County on Tuesday morning, Fairfax police said.

       Officers were called to an apartment in the 4200 block of Mazarin Place about 10:30 a.m. for a welfare check by a parent of one of those found dead, a police spokesman said.

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       A roommate let the officers inside the apartment and said the person they were looking for lived in a back bedroom, Fairfax County’s executive deputy chief, Brian Reilly, said at an afternoon news conference.

       The officers weren’t able to enter the bedroom because it was barricaded. Police called the Fairfax fire department, which brought a ladder truck and raised it to the second-floor apartment, where firefighters were able to peer inside a window and see three bodies, Reilly said. Officers then forced entry and found a man and two women deceased with apparent gunshot wounds.

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       Reilly said that detectives believe the deceased adults were the only ones in the bedroom at the time of the shooting, and that they were considering the possibility that the shootings were a suicide or murder-suicide.

       Reilly said the roommate is not a suspect in connection with the deaths. Reilly said she did not appear to be home at the time of the shooting, but police are still investigating.

       Reilly said he did not yet know the relationship between the deceased adults, but they appeared to be in their mid-to-late 20s. Reilly said investigators were searching the bedroom for a weapon.

       The deaths occurred in the Camden Fair Lakes apartment complex just off Monument Drive, a collection of three- and four-story garden apartment buildings. Reilly said one of the women who was slain was a resident of the apartment along with the roommate.