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Responding to a Saturday evening 911 call, police find little girl in a Forest-Audelia area apartment with the dead bodies of her mother and a Dallas police officer. 

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Thomas and Tuttle

Otto Machelle Thomas and Officer Larry Tuttle

A woman evidently shot a man she called her boyfriend, a Dallas police officer, inside his Lake Highlands area apartment before turning the gun on herself, police say. Her young daughter was present during the violence. Police say the girl, 6, was in a closed bedroom and physically unharmed.

The events happened early Saturday evening. Otto Machelle Thomas, a 42-year old woman, called 911 to report that she had just shot and killed her boyfriend, Dallas Police Officer Larry Tuttle.

She identified herself and Tuttle by name. The apartment, Lake Highlands Landing on Forest Lane near Audelia, was the officer’s home.

“He was getting ready to hit me again and I just went off,” Thomas told the dispatcher during the initial 911 conversation.

As Northeast police patrol officers surrounded the apartment, Thomas shot herself, assistant chief Randy Blankenbaker explains at a press conference.

During a second 911 call, patrol officers can be heard instructing the woman to put the gun down, he says.

After officers heard the second shot, Dallas SWAT was called to the scene, where — in addition Thomas’ and Tuttle’s bodies — they found the child hiding in a bedroom. The girl was transported to a hospital for an examination and then to Child Protective Services.

The incident is still under investigation, Blankenbaker says.