Six family members were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in a suburban Dallas home on Monday after two brothers made a suicide pact to kill themselves and their entire family.
Officers arrived at the family's Allen residence at around 1 a.m. after a family friend reported that someone at the home was suicidal.When officers arrived, they found the family, from Bangladesh, dead inside the home with gunshot wounds.
The victims included the two brothers, a grandparent, two parents and a sister. Police identified the deceased as 54-year-old father Towhidul Islam; 56-year-old mother Iren Islam; 77-year-old grandmother Altafun Nessa; 21-year-old Tanvir Towhid and 19-year-old twins Farbin Towhid and her brother Farhan Towhid, according to NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.
According to police, Tanvir Towhid and Farhan Towhidkilled the family members before taking their own lives."Apparently two brothers made an agreement to commit suicide and ended up taking the entire family with them," said Sgt. Jon Felty, a police spokesman.
Farhan Details Struggles with Depression in Suicide Note
Shortly after news of the tragedy surfaced, a now-deleted social media account that belonged to Farhan contained a link to a lengthy suicide note in which he talked about his struggles with depression over the last five years.
"Hey everyone. I killed myself and my family," he wrote in the note, before adding that he was suffering from depression since 2016 and would often cut himself to seek "relief." He noted that his friends tried to help him but failed because "they eventually realized that dealing with a depressed person is a lot of work" and "how impossible fixing them is."
"I've never benefitted from telling someone about how depressed I was. It always ends with them having to leave me." Farhan also pointed out that his dad tried to get him help by sending him to a teen mental health camp, where he was diagnosed, recommended coping mechanism and prescribed medication, all of which seemed to help.
Farhan said his life started to turn around. Not only did he get a girlfriend "who was far out of [his] league" but also got into Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. His life was "perfect," he said but the solutions were only "temporary" and that he was still struggling with depression.
"It's not fair how everyone can be so content while I can't even fathom being happy," he wrote. "No matter what I just can't be happy."
Farhan Said He Executed Family Because They Would be 'Miserable'
Farhan added that his older brother, Tanvir, was going through the same mental health issues and that his situation was "much worse." On Feb. 21, 2021, Farhan said Tanvir came into his room with a proposition – "If we can't fix everything in a year, we'll kill ourselves and our family."
He added that he decided to kill his family because they would be "miserable" if he just killed himself. "I love my family. I genuinely do. And that's exactly why I decided to kill them," he wrote. "If I just killed myself, they would be miserable. They would spend the rest of their lives feeling guilt, despair, and a multitude of other adjectives that mean sad. Even after they got over it, it would've become a permanent facet of their lives (i.e. someone I loved killed themselves and I couldn't do anything about it)"
Farhan added that instead of having them deal with the aftermath of his suicide, he chose to "do them a favor and take them with me" so that none of them "would ever have to feel sad again." He noted that he and Tanvir tried by doubling his medication but eventually realized that they were just biding away time and decided to wait for a month instead of a year.
He said they planned to get two guns, which he said was easy because gun control in the US was a "joke." According to their plan, Farhan would kill his sister and grandmother while Tanvir would shoot the parents dead before claiming their own lives.
