EIGHT MEMBERS OF one family, including a teenager, were shot dead in rural Ohio on Friday, just before gunmen killed five people in Georgia.
In Ohio, seven bodies were found at three houses close to each other and an eighth was later found at a separate site, Sheriff Charles Reader told reporters.
The victims were “all adults except for a male juvenile” who was 16 years old, he said, and all members of a single family.
Two babies — one aged four days, the other six months — and a three-year-old child survived the shootings, he added.
The authorities gave no possible motive. And, with at least one suspected gunman still on the loose, no arrests have been made.
“Each one of the victims appears to have been executed, each one of the victims appears to have been shot in the head,” Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said.
“The preliminary determination has been made that none of the individuals committed suicide,” he added, saying the shooter or shooters “are still at large. We do not know their location.”
Several victims were in bed when they were shot, Reader said.
The first and fourth crime scenes are separated by 50km, the sheriff’s office said.
Earlier, DeWine and Reader said in a joint statement that the first seven victims had been found “in three Union Hill Road homes in Pike County,” a rural community about 130km east of Cincinnati.
There was no “active shooter,” they said.
Schools in Pike County and surrounding areas were earlier placed on lockdown as a precautionary measure, local media reported.
Agents from the Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation were leading the investigation, the statement said.
Ohio Governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich tweeted that the situation was “beyond comprehension.”
Meanwhile, five people were found dead in northern Georgia, in two separate incidents believed to be a domestic dispute, Columbia county sheriff’s officials said.
The man suspected of the shootings has also been found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Captain Andy Shedd with the Columbia County Sheriff’s office says 50-year-old Wayne Anthony Hawes’ body was recovered by authorities in his northeastern Georgia home. Shedd says the Friday night shootings stem from a domestic dispute that left three men and two females dead.
Police say three people were shot at one location in Appling and two others were shot dead at another location about a mile away.
The victims include 75-year-old Roosevelt Burns, 85-year-old Rheba Mae Dent, 31-year-old Kelia Clark, 59-year-old Lizzy Williams and 62-year-old Shelly Williams.
Police believe some of the victims were related to the suspect’s wife.
© – AFP 2016 with reporting by Associated Press
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