Autopsies due on 4 in Chester City

The Delaware County Medical Examiner's Office is expected to release today the autopsy results of four people - three adults and a toddler - found dead in a Chester City apartment Saturday night.

A spokesman for the Medical Examiner's Office in Lima said yesterday pathologists would complete work this morning and make public the results and the identities of the four.

Chester police detectives had no comment yesterday on the probe into the deaths, saying they were awaiting the autopsy results.

Investigators initially believed the victims might have died from carbon monoxide poisoning, but they later rejected that theory. Chester Police Chief Floyd Lewis has called the deaths suspicious because the victims were in different rooms.

Yet, Lewis said, there was no sign of a break-in at the second-floor apartment in the 900 block of Keystone Road. None of the bodies had obvious wounds or signs of trauma.

According to a statement Lewis released yesterday, Chester police received a call about 7:30 p.m. Saturday from a relative who asked them to "check on the well-being of the [caller's] daughter."

Police said officers were sent to the apartment near the city's southwestern border with Trainer Borough. They arrived about 8 p.m. and were let in by the landlord, who was not identified.

In the living room and a bedroom, police said, they found the bodies of a toddler and a man and two women, who appeared to be in their 20s. Paramedics pronounced the four dead at the scene, police said.