MINNEAPOLIS — A couple and their three children who hadn’t been seen for days have died in what police appear to believe was a murder-suicide at their lakeside home in an upscale western Minneapolis suburb.

South Lake Minnetonka police went to check on the family at 12:21 p.m. Thursday after getting a call from a co-worker of the father, Interim Chief Mike Siitari told The Associated Press. Siitari wouldn’t release any information on how the family members died but said there appeared to be “no threat or danger to the community.”

The children had not been in school for the past two days, Siitari said.

Authorities did not release the identities of those killed, but the father’s business posted a notice online identifying Brian Short and his family as the victims.

Siitari said the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office was processing a “complex crime scene.”

“Obviously it’s an extremely tragic event and it’s going to take some time to sort through,” he said.

The children attended Minnetonka High School, where counseling was made available Friday for students struggling with the deaths.

“This is an incredibly difficult time for our school community,” Principal Jeffrey Erickson said in a letter to parents.

Aerial footage from KSTP-TV showed an upscale home in Greenwood, a village of about 700 people on the shore of Lake Minnetonka. Police sealed off Channel Drive, and a sign at the entrance to the wooded cul-de-sac read “Children playing.” The family’s house wasn’t visible beyond the police line.

Hennepin County property databases list the house as registered to Brian and Karen Short. Brian Short is the founder of AllNurses.com, a resource portal for nurses. An online biography at the site said Short lived outside Minneapolis with his wife and three children.

The biography describes Short as a former nursing student and entrepreneur who built and launched the website in the late 1990s when he couldn’t find nursing-related information online.

An administrator of AllNurses.com posted a notice Thursday night saying that the family had been killed and calling it “a very tragic loss for the extended families, friends, co-workers, and this nursing community.”

A man who answered the phone at AllNurses.com declined to comment and hung up.

Neighbor Doug Plocek returned home Thursday to find the street blocked by police cars.