At least seven were killed in “execution-style” shootings in southern Ohio, authorities said Friday. The dead include five adults and two juveniles, said Dan Tiernan, spokesman for Ohio’s state attorney general’s office. All seven appear to be members of the same family and were found in three different homes on Union Hill Road.
Authorities have not identified those killed. But neighbors and relatives say the area closed off by police was occupied by a large family split among three different trailers.
“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, Fulton said. All three trailers are less than a mile apart.
“They were very good people,” said a relative of the woman by phone, who did not want to be identified. “She was so good with her kids and her grandbaby. We’re just brokenhearted.”
Video from local TV news outlets showed law enforcement vehicles clustered around the trailers on a stretch of Union Hill Road, where authorities say the incident occurred. Neighbors there describe it as a rural area of mostly mobile homes.
Authorities have not identified the victims, and it is not clear whether the dead include the shooter. Authorities said there have not been any arrests and there was no threat of an active shooter.
Dan Tierney, a spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, said Pike County sheriff’s office called state authorities at 8:21 a.m. requesting help. The attorney general sent agents from four of its units: crime scene, special investigations, criminal intelligence and cybercrimes.
Officials at Peebles High School said they placed the school on lockdown Friday morning as a precaution but lifted that lockdown by about 10:30 a.m.
