Mom, Son, 5, Found Dead in Ariz. Hospital Room

A mother and her 5-year-old son were found dead Saturday in the boy's hospital room, and authorities in Arizona are treating their deaths as a murder-suicide, reports NBC News. "We don't have any reason to believe that it is not," says a Mesa police rep. Dead is 27-year-old Lola Griffith, of a gunshot wound that police believe was self-inflicted and came after she killed son Helious.

Officials aren't saying what killed Helious, nor what he was being treated for at Cardon Children's Medical Center. In a YouCaring post, however, Griffith said her son suffered dystonic cerebral palsy; she sought $1,800 for the purchase of a used van, reports ABC News. As of this writing, $95 had been donated. ABC notes that Griffith had met with the state Department of Child Safety just days before the deaths. (More murder-suicide stories.)