Not much detail yet on this story, but once again gun violence in America rears its devastatingly cruel and monstrous head.
TYRONE, Missouri – Nine people were found dead in southern Missouri, authorities said Friday.
Texas County Sheriff James Sigman confirmed the deaths to the Houston Herald Friday morning.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol confirmed to CBS Springfield affiliate KOLR-TV that a shooter has been identified as one of the nine.
Police are saying that there are four confirmed separate crime scenes, and two other potential ones. Other reports indicate the suspected killer with the gun was found dead in a parked car.
Texas County sheriff’s deputies found victims in four separate residences in the Tyrone area after responding to a call about a disturbance. The caller, described as a juvenile girl, reported hearing shots in her house “and immediately fled to a neighbor’s house,” the statement said.
Further investigation revealed five additional victims who were deceased and one additional victim who was wounded in three additional residences” in the unincorporated community, the highway patrol said.
One report claims one of the people found dead at one of the sites was an elderly woman who was not shot, but who died of “natural causes.”
One person was found wounded but alive.
Condolences to all the family members of the deceased.
From Googling, Tyrone MO is a small cluster of houses (maybe 10 or 12). Nine people is a substantial part of the local population. It is midway between Springfield and Cape Girardeau.
The county population is 26,000. The population of the county seat is 2000. Farm and timber country. In 2010, the county was the center of population distribution in the US.
It was Clinton country but has become more Republican over the past two decades. Roughly 2-to-1 Republican in recent elections.
My intuitions are that it was a family conflict or an extended family conflict.
Houston is the county seat.
Before the age of global informational awareness, news of an event like this would be confined to the county seat media. And they are more frequent in rural areas than one might think. But unlike urban areas, the statistics in rural area are spread over much wider time and space.
Or possibly drug and/or smuggling related.
I’m sitting here shivering. I grew up about 50 mi from there.
Tough country. No work, no education, no way to occupy your time (not even bowling). Small insults and perceived failures loom large when you have 8-15 hours a day to obsess on them.
I left the day after I got out of High School. I’ve never been back.
this one says it all: Jericho Road
It’s called family annihilation. The survivors ran instead of trying to get a gun and return fire.
No doubt that more good guys with guns would have prevented this loss of life. Or so the NRA will state.
The reference to the NRA reminds me of that famous line from Unforgiven where Gene Hackman exclaims to Clint Eastwood, after Eastwood’s character kills the owner of the saloon, “You just shot an unarmed man!”
Clint’s character replies “He should have armed himself …”
I think that sums up the NRA’s response in every case where there is a mass shooting perfectly.