Seven people were found shot dead in a house in northern Alabama late Thursday, and the authorities said they were searching for the person responsible early the next morning.

The Morgan County Sheriff’s Office said deputies and the police responded to an emergency call reporting gunshots at about 11:20 p.m. on Thursday in Valhermoso Springs, near Huntsville, Ala. They found seven adults dead and began investigating the case as a homicide, the sheriff’s office said on Twitter.

The department said that there was “no immediate threat to the public in the area,” and that the crime scene unit of the nearby Madison County Sheriff’s Office and the F.B.I.’s violent crimes task force were assisting.

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Mike Swafford, the spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said on Friday that the authorities believe that the shooting was carried out by at least one person who then fled the house.

“We do believe them to have left the area,” he said in a telephone interview. “We believe somebody came to this residence to do ill, did it, and then has left. We believe it is an isolated, and not a spree, killing.”

He said the authorities had not identified a suspect.

Mr. Swafford said that when the police arrived, they found a back bedroom of the house, a single-level, ranch-style residence, on fire, but he said the fire was not being investigated as a cause of the deaths. The authorities entered through the garage, where they found three of the bodies, Mr. Swafford said. The cause of the fire was not known, he said.

He declined to say where the other bodies were found, and did not identify the victims.

Jeff Chunn, the Morgan County coroner, said the dead included four men and three women, and their relationship to one another was not immediately clear. No one else was in the house when the authorities arrived, he said.

Source: 7 People Dead in Alabama Shooting, Police Say

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