Warwick police released this sketch of the suspect in yesterday’s early morning shooting in Warwick.

WARWICK — The police continue to try and make sense of a triple shooting early yesterday morning in which a gunman injured a couple in their Hoxsie neighborhood home and fatally wounded a relative who was living with them.

Gabriel Medeiros, 35, of 43 Warwick Lake Ave., was killed in the scuffle. His brother, Caesar Medeiros, 43, and Caesar’s wife, Claire Medeiros, 39, suffered non-life-threatening injuries. They were treated at Rhode Island Hospital and released late yesterday.

The crime allegedly occurred just after midnight when Caesar Medeiros awoke to the sound of his dog barking and noises coming from the front of the couple’s ranch-style house. When he got up to investigate, the police say, he was confronted outside his bedroom door by a masked man who carried a nickel-plated handgun and may have walked in through an unlocked front door.

“A violent struggle” reportedly ensued, at which time his wife and Gabriel Medeiros, who lives in his brother’s basement, joined in, according to Warwick Police Chief Col. Stephen McCartney.

Gabriel was shot in the chest and likely died instantly, the police say. Caesar was then shot in the arm and the upper torso and Claire in the thigh. It is believed the assailant suffered head injuries in the fight, though the police refuse to say how he was wounded.

Before the patrolmen arrived, the suspect ran out the back door of the house and disappeared in the normally quiet neighborhood behind the Warwick school administration building and St. Timothy Church off Warwick Avenue.

The police have described the assailant as clean shaven and between 5’8” and 5’10” with red hair sprinkled with salt and pepper. As of last night, they had no leads on where the suspect may be, but said they were checking hospitals throughout New England in the event he may have sought medical care.

“We’ve gotten no information to indicate that there was any familiarity between the assailant and the victims, but I still think that ‘why that house at that time of night?’ is a good question for investigators to look at,” McCartney said.

He added that the police are now looking into the victims’ backgrounds, including any relevant contact they may have had with the police in the past. “I think the background information is very vital here,” McCartney said.

Asked last night where the couple went following their release from the hospital, Warwick Det. Marc Lesser refused to comment. Asked if the Medeiroses had been brought in for police questioning, Lesser again refused to comment.

In the early morning hours following the shootings, Warwick police mobilized nearly 90 percent of the department to search a grid in the two to three miles surrounding the house. The Rhode Island State Police and Cranston police assisted in the search, as did several search-and-rescue dogs.

Lorraine Martineau, who lives alone across the street in the house where she raised five children, was asleep when she heard the gunshots, at first mistaking them for fireworks from an early holiday celebration. A short time later, the police arrived at her door asking if she had seen the suspect. When she said she didn’t see anything, they told her to sit tight and keep her door locked.

Like so many in this neighborhood of mostly elderly residents, Martineau spent those early morning hours restless and frightened. At daybreak, the street was still crawling with police cars and another officer soon appeared at her door, wanting to search her garage. By then, Martineau’s phone was ringing off the hook with friends and family who saw footage of her block on the morning news.

McCartney said the police activated their automatic call system to notify area residents of a possible gunman on the loose, but late yesterday morning, few on Warwick Avenue, including Martineau, had received such a call.

Martineau said she was sometimes friendly with her younger neighbors. The couple bought the house a few years back, moving from Providence to Warwick, though Caesar’s brother, Gabriel, had moved in about a year ago.

Caesar Medeiros occasionally shoveled her snow in wintertime and once helped her install a new rug. “He called me sweetheart and said ‘if you ever need anything, call me,’ ” Martineau recalled.

At nearby Sandwich Junction, the lunch spot where Claire Medeiros worked until recently, owner Kathy Ruginski praised her former employee as a hard worker whose husband, Caesar, sometimes came to help out at closing time. Claire Medeiros left the shop last month to take a job in East Providence. She needed health benefits, so Ruginski reluctantly let her go.

McCartney said there is no record of the police visiting the Warwick Avenue house in the years since the Medeiroses moved in. He added that both have been cooperative witnesses at the hospital.

Yesterday afternoon, detectives continued to search the house, their shoes swaddled in cloth to protect potential evidence.

“We have certainly covered that area. There is also some indication that [the suspect] may have gotten out of the area before the arrival of the police,” McCartney said.

Though Warwick is Rhode Island’s second-largest city, homicides are an unusual occurrence here. The last known murder occurred in March 2006 when a Baltimore kick boxer allegedly murdered his girlfriend at the Motel 6 on Jefferson Boulevard. The trial of James Richardson, who is accused of killing his former boss’s wife in November 2005, ended in hung jury earlier this week.

McCartney acknowledged that yesterday’s shootings no doubt alarmed residents and urged them to take common-sense precautions, including locking their doors and watching for strange activity.

Anyone with information about yesterday’s shootings is asked to call the Warwick police at (401) 468-4233 or (401) 732-8477.

cneedham@projo.com