LYNNWOOD — A suspect in a Marysville homicide fled to a home near Lynnwood, where he shot and killed another person and two of her relatives Thursday morning, investigators said.

Around 4 a.m., Marysville officers responded to a “distress call” at the Twin Lakes Landing apartments in the 2600 block of 164th Street NE, police said.

Britney Holt, a witness, had moved into the Housing Hope project with her kids in May. She was in an apartment with friends when she heard what sounded like two gunshots outside. They ran to the balcony, where Holt saw a man on the ground in the parking lot, screaming for help. The gunman walked up to him and shot him in the head, Holt said.

“At that moment in time,” Holt recalled, “I was worried he was going to turn around and shoot us because we saw what he did.”

They ran back inside. Holt called 911. Some neighbors tried to check if the gunman was still on the property. Others stayed with the dying man until he took his last breath, Holt said.

Officers arrived to find a 31-year-old man with gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The shooter left in a white car, and witnesses pointed officers in the direction he fled, according to the Marysville Police Department.

Around 7 a.m., sheriff’s deputies were called to another shooting about 25 miles south, inside a home near the intersection of 164th Street SW and 48th Place West, according to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.

The suspected shooter, 31, of Marysville, had “gained entry” into the family’s house, just north of Lynnwood city limits, according to the sheriff’s office. The man then stole a car registered to a resident and drove away, O’Keefe said.

Deputies found a woman in the home with gunshot wounds. She was pronounced dead at the scene, sheriff’s spokesperson Courtney O’Keefe said.

The two wounded relatives, a man and a woman, were taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with life-threatening injuries, according to the sheriff’s office. Two young children were also in the house at the time of the shooting, but they were uninjured.

Deputies pursued the man, who got out of the car and fled on foot, O’Keefe said. A police dog and air support from the Washington State Patrol tracked him in a brief pursuit.

The air unit found the suspect hiding near Norma Beach Road. Deputies arrested the man without further incident, O’Keefe said.

“It was imperative to get this guy off the street,” Sheriff Adam Fortney said in a Facebook post.

The man’s relation to the Lynnwood family, if any, was unknown, O’Keefe said.

Six hours after the Lynnwood shooting, the small road leading down 48th Place West was still filled with patrol cars. The intersection was mostly quiet, with cars sporadically driving past.

JoAnna Fulton, who has lived in the neighborhood for 55 years, had never seen anything like this.

“When I was growing up, you used to be able to leave your door unlocked,” Fulton said. “Not no more. Now you gotta leave your door locked. Deadbolt it.”

Fulton lives several houses down from the crime scene. She left for work around 6:30 a.m., just before the shooting, she said.

Child Protective Services took custody of the children in the Lynnwood home.

On Thursday afternoon at Twin Lakes Landing, kids could be heard asking the adults what had happened.

Other kids rode bikes around a jungle gym. Less than 200 feet away, a single maintenance worker pressure-washed a parking space, cleaning up the last signs that it had been a shooting scene. The worker, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said he “didn’t want the kids to see.”

Detectives had not released a suspected motive in either shooting.

The two wounded people remained in critical condition as of Thursday afternoon, Harborview spokesperson Susan Gregg said.

Jonathan Tall: 425-339-3486; jonathan.tall@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @EDHJonTall.

Maya Tizon: 425-339-3434; maya.tizon@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @mayatizon.