Police suspect a Bend woman killed her 7-year-old special-needs son in her home Monday evening before attempting to take her own life.

Tashina Aleine Jordan, 28, is being treated at St. Charles Bend for a life-threatening overdose, Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel said. Her son, Mason Jordan, was pronounced dead at the scene.

At 5:46 p.m. Monday, emergency personnel were called to Jordan’s home on Mount Hope Drive, where they found Jordan clinging to life and Mason dead of an apparent gunshot wound. A note at the scene led investigators to suspect Jordan attempted a murder-suicide, according to Bend Police spokesman Lt. Clint Burleigh.

Tuesday afternoon, detectives with Bend Police took down the caution tape around the single-story home. Local and state police investigators had spent much of the past 24 hours gathering evidence and interviewing residents in this quiet neighborhood in southwest Bend.

Working the crime scene were state forensic investigators, the Deschutes County District Attorney’s Office and the Oregon Department of Human Services. Authorities parked a command center vehicle in front of the home of Jesse Patterson across the street. Patterson said he watched investigators haul away several large sections of carpet. Detectives also paid particular attention to the driver’s seat of a gold Honda Odyssey van with a disability placard parked in front of Jordan’s house, he said.

Mason had cerebral palsy and hydrocephalus, according to a bio on the website of the Sparrow Clubs. Through the nonprofit, students at Miller Middle School raised money in 2016-17 for Mason’s medical and living expenses.

Mason was born healthy in 2011 and was progressing normally until he was 5 weeks old, when he was rushed to the hospital and was flown to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, according to the Sparrow Clubs bio.

“After three long weeks in the hospital, Mason slowly began to come out of his coma,” the bio reads. “After enduring 32 days, a feeding tube placement, 4 brain surgeries and open heart surgery, and a stomach infection, Mason was able to come home.”

Neighbors on Mount Hope Drive reported seeing Tashina Jordan occasionally push her son on a short loop around the neighborhood. Mostly, though, they said she kept to herself. One woman who’d lived on the block for more than a decade was surprised Monday to learn Jordan had also lived there for years.

Kerenia Quinn lives several houses down from Jordan. As a fellow mother of a child with special needs, Quinn said she would notice Jordan when she walked by her house with Mason.

“You notice others, and your heart goes out to them,” Quinn said.

Quinn said that Monday evening as the sun set, neighbors sat on the curbs of Mount Hope Drive and cried. Investigators even appeared overcome with emotion, she said.

Neighbor Michelle Wimmer said she told detectives she had noticed Mason in his wheelchair outside his house about six hours before he was discovered by police. It was one of only about three times Wimmer said she ever saw the boy.

Wimmer works with children with developmental disabilities and their families.

“I feel like a lot of a these parents feel like they’re alone in the world.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0325, gandrews@bendbulletin.com