A Louisiana woman who was featured along with her family in the 2012 reality TV show Bayou Billionaires was killed Monday in an apparent murder-suicide, according to police.

Valerie Dowden Wells was shot multiple times as she sat in her car near a McDonald's parking lot in Shreveport, Louisiana, police Sgt. Rod Johnson tells PEOPLE.

Wells, 47, was killed by Robert Paul Gaddy, who then turned the gun on himself, Johnson says. Gaddy and Wells were both taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead and he later died.

"We know they had a relationship of some type, but I can't tell you if they were friends having a dispute or formerly intimate. We simply don't know at this moment," Johnson says. "We have some guesses, but we'd like to back that up with hard facts."

Gaddy "is a man [Wells] knew from high school who she recently started dating," Brian Flanagan, Bayou Billionaires' executive producer, tells PEOPLE.

Kitten Dowden, Wells' mother, texted Flanagan with the news today. "It's complete heartbreak," he says, and her family "is not doing well."

Wells' parents, Kitty and Gerald Dowden, who also starred in the show, wrote of their daughter's death on Facebook Tuesday morning, according to KTBS.



"This is really hard on us and her children," they reportedly wrote. "It is out of order. No parents should have to go through this."