Saturday, April 04, 2009

More Shooting Deathes this Weekend.....More Questions....

Tonight it was a family outside Seattle, in Graham Washington, a father shot his five children and himself... motive for such an horrible act is unclear.... mother is with relatives at this time.

( Last night it was a Shooting Incident in Pittsburgh- I will update tomorrow...we need to know WHY are these all occuring- 5 last month atleast...are these Desperate Times...Hard Times...)
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Sunday AM Updates;;;
There is still confusion about what happened, and why, supposedly there was a heated argument before this event. Another report says that authorities had been called before.

6 comments:

Fran said...

Sadly, make that 5 children & the father who took his own life. Please don;t make this be about another job loss/economy story.


(CNN) -- Five children were found shot to death in a home near Tacoma, Washington, Saturday afternoon, police said.

Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told CNN that the children, ages 7 to 16, were killed by their father, who apparently committed suicide later in nearby King County.

The children -- four girls and one boy -- were found in a Pierce County home.

enigma4ever said...

sadly I think it is fran....job problems..money problems...etc...5 children....one story said that she was seeing a priest when he did this...really sad.

HAPPY IN NEVADA said...

That's the story I posted in my comment on your Binghamton Story - I see you made it into a hyperlink. This is the update on the reason he did this. Diane

Police: Dad killed kids because wife was leaving
By PHUONG LE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GRAHAM -- A man who fatally shot his five children and killed himself had just discovered his wife was leaving him for another man, authorities said Sunday.

The children, aged 7 to 16, were found shot to death Saturday in the family's mobile home in Graham, 15 miles southeast of Tacoma. The father, James Harrison, was found earlier in the day, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot behind the wheel of his idling car 18 miles away in Auburn, about 30 miles south of Seattle.

The night before, the father and his eldest daughter went in search of the wife, Angela Harrison. The daughter used a GPS feature in her mother's cell phone to find her with another man at a convenience store in Auburn, said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff.

The woman told her husband she was not coming home, and was leaving him for the man with her at the store. The father and the daughter left, distraught, Troyer said. Sometime after the children went to sleep, he mounted a merciless attack on them, shooting each multiple times. Four died in their beds. The fifth was found in the mobile home's bathroom, surrounded by signs of violent struggle.

"He wanted the kids dead," Troyer said. "It wasn't like he shot a few rounds. He shot several rounds."

Investigators believe he then returned to the area near the convenience store looking for his wife. His body was found near the store, Troyer said.

"We think he was going to go back to kill the wife," Troyer said. "He probably didn't find her and realized the gravity of what he'd done and shot himself."

Several weapons were found in the home.

Authorities have not released the names of the family, relatives identified the couple as Angela and James Harrison and the children as Maxine, Samantha, Heather, Jamie and James.

Ryan Peden, Maxine's classmate, had said she told him Friday night that her parents had gotten into a fight and her mother had left. The father followed the mother and tried to get her to return, said Peden.

"Maxine texted me at 11 p.m. Friday. She said: "I'm tired of crying. I'm going to bed.'"' His text to her the next day went unanswered.

Candy Johnson, Angela Harrison's aunt, described James Harrison as a strict, controlling husband and father who didn't allow his wife to make any decisions without asking him first.

"My niece has been so controlled from the time she was young," Johnson said, adding that James Harrison had impregnated Angela when she was 13.

"It's unbelievable," Johnson said. "My whole family is in shock. How does this happen? How does anyone do that?"

The father worked as a diesel mechanic, and the mother works at Wal-Mart, said another of Angela Harrison's aunts, Penny Flansburg. Troyer, however, said he worked as a security guard at a casino.

Ron Vorak, who lives across the street from the family's trailer at the Deer Run mobile home park, said James Harrison "wasn't too friendly a person."

"He was always hollering at the kids. He seemed to be strict with them."

Harrison was put on a parenting plan by state child welfare officials in 2007 after what Troyer describes as a "minor assault" on one of the children. He agreed to the plan and the case was closed, Troyer said.

Outside the mobile home, neighbors left cards and bouquets of flowers. The yellow crime-scene tape and dozens of investigators who responded to the scene on Saturday were gone. The home's front yard was littered with the toys of children who will never play again: unused bicycles, a swing set, a trampoline and a basketball hoop.

A few people drove slowly by the scene, a neatly kept mobile home in a quiet park nestled among towering evergreens.

"How do you make sense out of something like this?" asked Jeff Davis, superintendent of the 2,100-student Orting School District where all five children attended school.

He said school officials were making arrangements to have grief counselors available when teachers and students returned to school.

"In a small community like this, we know these kids," Davis said. " Teachers know the kids. All the kids know the kids."

Davis said the eldest, Maxine Harrison, was a tenth-grader at Orting High School. Jamie was in the eighth grade and her sister Samantha in the sixth grade at Orting Middle School; and the two youngest, Heather and James, were second-graders at Orting Primary School.

One neighbor, Sheree Lund, who lives in the mobile home park, signed a community notebook left in from of the family's house. She wrote: "God Bless the five little ones. God bring peace to Mom."

HAPPY IN NEVADA said...

Now add another sad story; while some are anxious to die by their own hand, others have put up a valiant fight against illness - this story is an example:

Reports: Farrah Fawcett Hospitalized after Cancer Setback
Apr 5, 2009 10:27 AM ET by Matt Mitovich 8 Comments
email this Buzz up!add to Yahoo! buzz add to facebook
Farrah Fawcett
Farrah Fawcett has been hospitalized since Thursday, signifying the latest setback in the actress' 2-1/2 year battle with cancer.

Sources close to Fawcett's family tell RadarOnline.com, the first outlet to report on her hospitalization, that she has been unconscious and in critical but stable condition.

Fawcett, 62, was first diagnosed with anal cancer in October 2006. After undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments, her doctors declared her "cancer free" in February 2007. Months later, however, the cancer returned, prompting Fawcett to pursue aggressive and sometimes experimental treatments.

Fawcett's longtime boyfriend, Ryan O'Neal ,and his son, Redmond, are reportedly at her bedside during this latest ordeal.

enigma4ever said...

so so sad..I first read about this and they speculated that she was not screened or diagnosed early enough....she went to England for treatment recently.....I am glad that she is here in the states with loved ones by her side....and I pray that she is comfortable....

HAPPY IN NEVADA said...

Now another one today - this is completely getting out of hand; so much news coverage makes me worry it's inciting more of this same thing........

4 killed in Ala. home; suspect later found dead
The Associated Press

Tue, Apr 7, 2009 (4:54 p.m.)

A man shot and killed his estranged wife, their teenage daughter and two other relatives in rural north Alabama before returning to his home in a nearby town and killing himself the day before their divorce trial, authorities said Tuesday.

Travis Clemmons, chief investigator for the Lauderdale County sheriff's office, said Kevin Garner's body was found Tuesday afternoon near his home in Priceville, which burned to the ground overnight. He said Garner apparently shot himself in the chest.

Earlier in the day, authorities had found the other four bodies in a home in Green Hill, a small community near the Tennessee line in a nearby county. Those bodies were identified as Garner's estranged wife, Tammy, 40; their 16-year-old daughter, Chelsie; and Garner's sister and the sister's 11-year-old son, Clemmons said. He identified the sister as Karen Beaty of Illinois but did not have other information about her and the slain boy.

He said the four were shot, apparently with a handgun. Investigators said the killings happened around midnight Monday.

It was one of eight mass shootings around the country in the last month that have left grief-stricken communities in shock. It's also the third mass killing in Alabama during that time.

Clemmons said a neighbor came across the street to the house Tuesday morning to visit but called authorities after seeing a body through glass in the door.

Clemmons said the divorce case appeared to be among the triggers of the violence.

"It wasn't just one particular thing, just everything happening at once," he said.

Court officials said the Garners had made an appearance in court Monday in advance of the trial, and nothing seemed unusual or indicated it would lead to killings.

"I just can't understand it," said Clemmons, "and with with a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old kid, there's nothing rational about it."

Jerry Knight, an attorney who represented Kevin Garner in the divorce case, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that Garner "had a terrific work ethic and value system. I was terribly shocked and saddened by this unexpected tragedy."

Kevin Garner had worked at a Decatur chemical plant and Tammy Garner had been employed at a Huntsville department store.

In the divorce file, Tammy Garner sought custody of their daughter and alleged that her husband "has been both physically and emotionally abusive." He accused her of adultery.

He also accused his wife of taking $38,000 out of their joint bank account when they separated May 27, 2008.

Along with Garner's two-story house, which collapsed in the fire, a green Subaru Legacy belonging to Garner's wife was found burned in the Morgan County community of Somerville, less than 10 miles from the burned house.

The five deaths follow the stabbing deaths of four people in a home in Hueytown, near Birmingham, on March 7, and the shooting deaths of 10 people on March 10 by a gunman in south Alabama who also took his own life.