ROCKVILLE, Ind. (AP) - Minnesota police officers on Tuesday arrested a man charged with killing his wife and two stepdaughters during a weekend attack inside a western Indiana home.
Parke County Sheriff Charles Bollinger said Chad Cottrell was apprehended in central Minnesota's Todd County after he surrendered following a police chase.
A manhunt for Cottrell, 35, started Monday morning after police said the victims' bodies were found in his rural home by the girls' grandparents.
Additional information on the arrest was not immediately available from Minnesota authorities.
An arrest warrant was issued Monday charging Cottrell with three counts of murder in the deaths of Trisha Cottrell, 29, and her daughters Brittany Williams, 12, and Victoria Williams, 10.
Another child who was inside the home during the attack late Saturday or early Sunday survived unharmed, Bollinger said.
The child was inside the home for at least a few hours after the killings, but authorities would not give any details about the child, including whether the child was related to the victims or Chad Cottrell.
The girls' grandparents found the bodies when they went to the house after becoming concerned since they had not heard from the family over the weekend, said Sgt. Joe Watts of the Indiana State Police.
Investigators have declined to release any information on the cause of the deaths.
The grandparents first went to the house on Sunday, but did not go inside, police said.
The Cottrell home had been the site of several police calls, but Parke County deputies had no reason to suspect that anyone's life would be in danger, Watts said.
"They had been out there a number of times for various domestic issues," he said. "Nothing really serious, nothing like this."
The killings happened in a one-story brick home about 25 miles north of Terre Haute which is surrounded by farm fields and pastures and is set back from the road by a long driveway. The nearest neighbor lives about a quarter of a mile away.
Watts said there was no specific information to indicate other family members were in danger, but several nearby schools were locked down Monday and Tuesday as a safety precaution since some relatives attend some of the schools. Authorities also canceled Halloween trick-or-treating for the area Monday night.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
