DULUTH – A Duluth man known to struggle with mental health killed his two sons, his wife and a former partner before shooting himself earlier this week.

The tragedy came to light after Duluth police were called to conduct a welfare check Thursday afternoon at a home in the quiet 6000 block of Tacony Street in the West Duluth neighborhood, where Anthony Nephew’s former partner, Erin Abramson, in age 47, lived with their son, Jacob Nephew. , 15. Abramson, who worked for the city of Superior, had not shown up for work that day — which was unusual and a cause for concern among co-workers.

Both were dead from multiple gunshot wounds.

Police turned their attention to Anthony Nephew’s home less than a mile away in the 4400 block of West Sixth Street across from Denfeld High School. They secured the perimeter and sent in a drone, discovering Nephew’s wife, Kathryn “Kat” Ramsland, 45, and their son, Oliver Nephew, 7, who had also been , shot and killed, Duluth Police Chief Mike Ceynowa said during a somber news conference Friday afternoon. at the city’s public safety building.

Anthony Nephew was also at the house – dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Ceynowa said police are still investigating the timeline by analyzing cell phone data. The nephew’s motives were not definitive, but the police chief said he was known to struggle with mental health. Ceynowa confirmed that police have responded to calls to the home in the past.

Anthony Nephew said in a 2021 column he wrote for the Duluth News Tribune that it’s time to start building better mental health frameworks in this country. Most Americans, he wrote, deny that they have mental health problems.

“Because they have to, because they’re told, or because they don’t realize that their minds are broken, they keep pushing forward, suffering one psychic injury after another, trauma after trauma, gathering interest, until finally the synapses overload, and they suffer a breakdown,” he wrote.