Hope Marie West and Harmony Mae West died by homicide, according to police. GoFundMe

MECHANIC FALLS — Two young sisters whose bodies were discovered Saturday at their family’s second-floor apartment died by homicide, according to Chief Jeffrey Goss of the Mechanic Falls Police Department.

The bodies of Harmony Mae West, 11, and Hope Marie West, 6, were discovered at 5 Highland Ave. during a welfare check by Mechanic Falls police.

Mechanic Falls police requested assistance from the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit South after discovering three bodies at the residence at the corner of Elm Street and Highland Avenue, according to Shannon Moss, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

The third body was that of the girls’ mother, Jennifer Barney, 37, whose death has been ruled a suicide, Goss said.

Detectives and evidence response technicians responded and spent Saturday evening and the overnight hours processing the scene.

The three bodies were taken to the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in Augusta, where autopsies were performed to determine the cause and manner of death.

On the lawn outside the multiunit apartment Wednesday, flowers, cards, pictures and stuffed toys filled the bottom of the stairway leading up to that door.

Earlier in the week, the expanding pile of mementoes was exposed to the elements, but a blue pop-up tent has since been erected over the collection to shelter the tributes.

The trampoline that neighbors said the two girls often used was visible in the apartment building’s front yard.

Harmony and Hope West were born in Lewiston and moved to Mechanic Falls. The girls attended the Elm Street School, but had not been seen at summer school in recent weeks, according to reports.

Neighbors said Sunday they had not seen the girls playing outside in several weeks. The neighbors also said they did not know the family well because the mother, Barney, kept to herself.

Barney worked as an inbound sales representative at the former Maine-based Argo Marketing from April to August 2017, and one of the neighbors believed Barney most recently drove for DoorDash, a job where she was able to take her girls inside the car when making deliveries.

The girls’ father, James Lee West, died in 2019. According to West’s obituary, he had been living in Casco at the time of his death.

A GoFundMe page was set up and is managed by the girls’ great-uncle, Dan Parrott, who lives in Nevada. The GoFundMe page was reportedly established at the request of his sister and the girls’ paternal grandmother from Lewiston. All funds are expected to go to the family to cover funeral expenses.

As of 6 p.m. Thursday, the GoFundMe page had raised $8,091 toward its goal of $10,000.