A mother shot dead her two young children in a hotel room before turning the gun on herself in a suspected murder-suicide.

Latasha Nicole Washington, 40, was found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound beside her six-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son.

Staff at the Marriott Residence Inn in southwest Houston found the bodies on Friday after noticing no one in the room had been heard from since last Wednesday.

Washington was identified by the Harris County Medical Examiner, and by her cousin who expressed her shock at the murder-suicide.

The medical examiner recorded the trio’s time of death as 11.55am on Wednesday, when their bodies were viewed by police, but exactly when they died is unclear.

The names of Washington’s children are not yet confirmed, the medical examiner told the Daily Mail.

Washington’s last listed address was a house owned by her parents Randy and Janice Washington in the Corinthian Pointe neighborhood of Houston.

The house, which the couple bought when Washington was 18, is about seven miles from the hotel where she was found dead. 

The 40-year-old woman was found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound beside her six-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son at the Marriott Residence Inn in southwest Houston

Police outside the hotel as their colleagues investigate the disturbing scene inside

The troubled mother grew up in Houston and has a large extended family across Texas and the San Francisco Bay area. It is not clear who the children’s father was.

Houston Police arrived at the hotel just before noon on Friday to investigate the deaths, and believe it to be a murder-suicide.

‘Very tragic incident today – two children unfortunately killed at a very young age,’ Lieutenant Larry Crowson said.

‘Right now, preliminarily, we believe this to be a murder-suicide. This does appear to involve mental health issues.’

Police will continue investigating and the medical examiner will confirm their cause of death.