ATLANTA, Georgia — Five people were shot, leaving four of them dead early Wednesday morning in an apparent murder-suicide.
Before 6 a.m. today, deputies responded to a shooting call at a residence on Old Atlanta Road. Upon arrival, deputies located 5 individuals with apparent gunshot wounds.
An adult male, who is believed to be the alleged shooter, was located deceased on scene. Two young children were also found deceased at the scene. An adult male and adult female were transported to an area hospital, and the female later died as a result of her injuries.
The investigation is still on going, however, initial information suggests that this was a domestic related shooting and an apparent muder-suicide. There are no additional suspects at this time.
Initial report: Deputies are on scene at a shooting in a residence on Old Atlanta Road. At this time, we believe this to be domestic related. We have 5 people shot, 4 are deceased. This is possibly a murder-suicide.
There is no threat to the public and no suspects believed to be on the loose.
VPC.org: Murder-suicide is “a dramatic, violent event” in which a person, almost always a man, commits one murder or multiple murders, and then shortly after commits suicide.
What makes these acts particularly disturbing is that they involve more than one person and often involve a family. They almost always are committed with a firearm. Yet the phenomenon of murder-suicide garners little public attention as a significant contributor to gun-related death and injury. This is despite the fact that, as one medical professional has observed, “because many murder-suicides result in the death or injury of family members and sometimes mass murder, they cause countless additional morbidity, family trauma, and disruption of communities.”
Currently, no comprehensive national database or tracking system exists to systematically document the toll in death and injury of murder-suicide in the United States.a In order to more fully understand the human costs of murder-suicide, starting in 2002 the Violence Policy Center (VPC) began collecting and analyzing news reports of murder-suicides, resulting in a series of studies titled American Roulette: Murder Suicide in the United States.
For each analysis, the VPC tracked murder-suicide incidents over a six-month period using Internet news reports. For this most recent edition of the report, news reports of murder-suicides were collected for the period January 1, 2011, through June 30, 2011. To be included in the study, both the murder and subsequent suicide had to occur within 72 hours of each other and within this six-month time period. While there is no official data to ensure all incidents that actually occurred were included, this study provides the most accurate portrait possible of murder-suicide in America and is most likely the largest and most comprehensive analysis currently available.
Photo source: @CBS4Indy/Twitter
