Some 12 hours before police found her dead in her apartment Sunday afternoon, Karly Patterson had asked for authorities’ help in removing her recent ex-boyfriend from her property.

Kyle Kerr, 20, had come with a friend to Patterson’s new apartment sometime after midnight Sunday.

Helen Police Chief Jim Couch said Patterson, an 18-year-old manager of Bodensee Restaurant, told police she didn’t want Kerr at her house.

Couch said Kerr left without incident shortly after police arrived.

But when police responded to reports of gunfire at the same apartment building about 1:15 Sunday afternoon, Patterson, some two weeks shy of her 19th birthday, was dead with multiple gunshot wounds, Couch said.

And Kerr, who died a few hours later at Northeast Georgia Medical Center, lay nearby, he said.

Patterson’s death was the first murder recorded in Helen, an Alpine-themed village on the banks of the Chattahoochee River, in at least four years.

What happened Sunday is still under investigation, but Couch, successor to retiring Helen Police Chief Ted Ray, said police are almost certain it was a murder-suicide resulting from unrequited love.

“They had broken up; he was trying to get back with her,” Couch said. “He was in love with her; she was trying to keep her distance.”

An autopsy and toxicology tests were performed on both bodies Wednesday, and families made arrangements for funeral services.

Kerr will be remembered in a ceremony today in Cleveland; Patterson’s family will lay her to rest Saturday.

The last time violence of this caliber touched Helen was in January 2008, when a fight outside a bar turned fatal, Couch said.

But Couch said Sunday’s incident, which he described as a case of domestic violence, could have happened anywhere. The police chief described it as a “sad, sad tragedy.”

“I wish we, you know, had the opportunity to address this if we had known (what was going to happen),” Couch said. “But you just never know what people are going to do.”