Family of 4, including 2 toddlers, found stabbed to death in New York City apartment

Police on Tuesday were investigating a suspected murder-suicide in an Upper West Side neighborhood in New York in which members of a family of four, including two toddlers, were found stabbed to death.

Officers said they responded to a request for a welfare check at the Upper West Side apartment Monday afternoon and with the help of the fire apartment, entered the fourth-floor apartment, where they found the bodies of two adults and two children with stab wounds. Police are investigating whether the deaths were part of a murder-suicide.

The family members were identified Tuesday as 41-year-old Edison Lopez, 40-year-old Alexandra Witek, 3-year-old Lucien Lopez and 1-year-old Calvin Lopez, according to the New York Police Department.

Neighbors told news outlets the man worked as the building's superintendent and had grown up in the building, taking over the job from his father. Building residents told CBS New York that the family was getting ready to move to Westchester, where Lopez had accepted another job as a super.

"They were adorable. They were babies," neighbor Lynne Allen told CBS of the two children.

The deaths come days after the apparent murder-suicides of families in Ohio and Oklahoma drew national attention. Member of a family of five, including three children, were found dead from gunshot wounds during a welfare check in northern Ohio on Thursday in what police said was a "domestic dispute that turned deadly."

Contributing: The Associated Press