Pike County: Eight people dead after 'execution-style shootings'

Seven members of one family - including two children - are said to have been shot to death 

At least eight people are dead, among them two children, after a series of execution-style” shootings in Ohio. Police said the situation no longer involved an “active shooter” and there was speculation the gunman was among the dead.
Reports said that seven of the dead appeared to be members of the same family and had been killed at three different homes in Pike County, eighty miles from the city of Columbus, on Friday morning. An eighth body was subsequently found at another address.

The dead include five adults and two juveniles, said Dan Tierney, spokesman for Ohio’s state attorney general’s office. At least two babies and several children survived.

Attorney General Mike DeWine told local radio station WLW: “We just within the last few minutes discovered another body in another house, so that takes us up to four houses with now a total of eight bodies so far.”

Of the children found alive at the main site, Mr DeWine said: “Some of them were very, very young. You had at least one or two babies.”

Authorities have not identified those killed, but neighbours and relatives said the area closed off by police was occupied by a large family split among three different trailers, the Associated Press reported.

“It was a mother, her former husband, their grown children and some grandchildren, too. They all used to attend our church,” said Phil Fulton, pastor of the nearby Union Hill Community Church.

The mother worked at a nursing home for the elderly, he said. She had just bought a new mobile home near the two existing trailers occupied by her ex-husband and her son, Mr Fulton said. All three trailers are less than a mile apart.
“They were very good people,” a relative of the woman, who did not want to be identified, told the Washington Post. “She was so good with her kids and her grandbaby. We’re just brokenhearted.”

Ohio Governor John Kasich called the reports “tragic beyond comprehension”.

The FBI in Cincinnati confirmed it had offered help to the Pike County Sheriff's Office. Adams County Ohio Valley Schools briefly went on lockdown after the discovery of the bodies was reported.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pike-county-seven-people-reported-dead-as-police-hunt-ohio-gunman-a6996611.html


Guns again!

Jesus. When will America learn?

Never, because the NRA holds too much power.

This sounds like a cull, what on earth is going on?

I think they are implying it was a member of the family.

It would seem so. How horrible

They said whoever it was could still be on the loose, considered armed and dangerous

PIKETON, Ohio (AP) -- Eight members of a family, including a mother sleeping in a bed with her 4-day-old baby next to her, were fatally shot in the head on Friday, leaving their rural town reeling while a manhunt was launched for whoever's responsible.
Three children, including the newborn, survived the grisly killings, which left seven adults and a teenage boy dead in four homes in Pike County, Attorney General Mike DeWine and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said. The economically distressed county in the Appalachian Mountain region has 28,000 residents and is 80 miles east of Cincinnati.
DeWine said there were no indications that any of the dead killed themselves, and Reader said if the shooter or shooters are at large, they should be considered armed and "extremely dangerous."
DeWine said, "There may be more than one, there may be three. We just don't know at this point."
Some of the victims were in bed, indicating they were shot while they were sleeping, authorities said. The victims were identified as members of the Rhoden family.
"It's heartbreaking," DeWine said. "The one mom was killed in her bed with the 4-day-old right there."
A motive isn't clear, authorities said, but they urged other members of the Rhoden family to take precautions, and Reader advised all residents to stay inside and lock their doors Friday night.
"This really is a question of public safety, and particularly for any of the Rhoden family," DeWine said.
The first three homes where bodies were found are within a couple miles of one another on a sparsely populated stretch of road, while the eighth body, that of a man, was found in a house farther away, the sheriff said.
The other surviving children were 6 months old and 3 years old, authorities said. Reader wouldn't say where they were taken Friday.
Authorities didn't release any information on whether there were multiple weapons used or whether anything was missing from the homes.
Area resident Goldie Hilderbran said she lives about a mile from where she has been told a shooting took place.
"I first heard about it this morning from our mail carrier," Hilderbran said.
Hilderbran said the mail carrier told her deputies had stopped her from delivering mail in the area they had blocked off.
"She just told me she knew something really bad has happened," Hilderbran said.
Gov. John Kasich, campaigning in Connecticut for his Republican presidential bid, said his office was monitoring the situation in Pike County and the search for the killer or killers.
"But we'll find them, we'll catch them and they'll be brought to justice," he said.
The FBI in Cincinnati also said it was closely monitoring the situation and has offered assistance to the Pike County sheriff's office if needed.
Peebles High School imposed a precautionary lockout Friday morning after authorities notified the superintendent of shootings that had occurred a few miles away, according to Regina Bennington, secretary to the superintendent for the Adams County Ohio Valley Schools district.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OHIO_SHOOTINGS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

OMG...Praying that they catch this {these} cretins ASAP...

Neither one of these aerial views show places that weren't homes
of well situated hard working families...these people were above
what mid-westerners would consider middle class rural farmers or
life stock production.