A man in the U.S. state of Montana killed eight relatives, including four children, before taking his own life, according to a spokesperson for the victims’ family.
اضافة اعلان
The Associated Press quoted Jennifer Mercer, who was authorized to speak on behalf of the family, as saying that the gunman opened fire on his relatives during a dinner gathering on Sunday. The victims spanned four generations, including a seven-year-old girl and a woman in her 90s.
Local police said officers rushed to the scene after receiving reports of the shooting. They heard gunfire coming from the back of the house before the building was engulfed in flames. Several victims were found dead at the scene, including the suspected gunman, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
According to a database jointly maintained by the Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University, the incident marks the 22nd mass killing in the United States since the beginning of this year.
James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University who oversees the database, said 15 of this year’s mass killings resulted from family disputes—higher than the usual average of around 50% for family-related mass killings in the U.S.
The Montana tragedy is considered the deadliest mass killing in the U.S. since April, when a man in Louisiana killed eight children—seven of them his own—and wounded his wife and another woman in a similar shooting.
