Gunman kills three in rural Georgia town, then self-harms – The Morning Call

JEFF AMY AND RUSS BYNUM (Associated Press)

A Georgia man killed himself Thursday in rural southern Georgia after shooting two relatives and a fast food restaurant manager, a local coroner said.

Colquitt County Coroner C. Verlyn Brock told the Associated Press. He said the 26-year-old shooter shot himself.

All three women appeared to have been shot multiple times, according to the coroner.

“I’ll never know what made him so angry,” Bullock said in a phone interview.

Block declined to release the names of those killed, saying his office was still working to notify next of kin.

McDonald’s said the woman killed at the restaurant was the manager, but the company did not release her name.

Moultrie Police have asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to lead an investigation into the case. As of Thursday night, the GBI issued a statement, only saying there had been “multiple fatalities” at various locations.

“We are working to gather more information and track down additional witnesses,” GBI special agent Jamy Steinberg wrote in an email. He did not immediately respond to phone calls and email messages asking for more information.

Jerry Goodwin lived next door to the shooter and his mother, and two doors down from his grandmother. He told the Associated Press on Thursday that he heard his wife being shot before 1 a.m. Thursday while he was asleep. He said he fired a gun while yelling something the day before the week before and Moultrie police responded.

Police and an ambulance arrived before 6 a.m., and the ambulance immediately transported one person, Goodwin said. He said coroners later recovered two more.

Goodwin said he didn’t know his neighbor well, but the man came to his house for advice on installing a fence after he moved in a few years ago.

“I’ve never seen him hurt or try to hurt anyone before,” Goodwin said.

Moultrie Police Chief Sean Ladson did not immediately respond to an e-mail message seeking comment. A person who answered the phone at police headquarters said Radson referred all calls to the GBI.

Tanner Strickland, who lives in Moultrie, said she knew two of the women killed.

Strickland told WALB-TV: “Both of them light up the room they enter. Both of them really have hearts of gold.”

Sabrina Holweger, who works in the optometrist’s office next to McDonald’s, told the Associated Press that she and a colleague lay gunned down in a restaurant doorway as police swarmed her when she and a colleague arrived at work before 8 a.m. He said he found the body of a woman.

“It was really scary not knowing if they shot themselves,” Holweger said.

She said police have blocked the boulevard that runs in front of McDonald’s in 15,000 cities.

Holweger said the woman who died at the restaurant was the early morning manager and the shooter was an employee. Holweger said the man appeared to have killed the woman when she unlocked the door to enter the early morning shift.

George Suarez, owner and operator of McDonald’s in Moultrie, said the restaurant will remain closed until further notice.

“We are devastated by the loss of our beloved restaurant manager and our hearts go out to all victims of this senseless act of violence,” Suarez said in a statement provided by McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago.

The killing in Moultrie, in rural Colquitt County, Florida, about 60 miles (95 km) northeast of Tallahassee, comes a day after Atlanta gunmen killed one and wounded four in a clinic. Did.

Colquitt County government administrator Chas Cannon said he was driving his daughter to school on Thursday morning when he passed a McDonald’s that had been cordoned off by police tape and patrol cars.

“We rarely get murdered in our neck of the woods,” Cannon said. “It’s amazing. But in this day and hour, our prisons are at capacity, and so are our local prisons. Unfortunately, there are many people breaking the law.”