By Rachel Lippmann
St. Louis – Police in Bonne Terre, Mo., about 60 miles southwest of St. Louis, say they do not know why a man shot and killed three people before killing himself.
Police Chief Doug Calvert responded to a disturbance in progress around 10 a.m. Tuesday morning. He said dispatchers could hear a woman screaming in the background of the 911 call, and he was forced to take a tactical position when dispatchers told him the suspect might have a gun.
Calvert said he called for backup when he saw a white male running from a duplex at 113 Boulder Dr. Officers later confronted the man about 300 yards from the community, where he shot himself. The victims ranged in age from 19 to 37 years old.
"We always have kind of an emergency plan we go through in case something like this would happen, and it went as far as our end, as good as can be," Calvert said.
Police found two victims dead inside the house. A third victim was found still alive in an SUV, but died at a local hospital. Two young boys were rescued unharmed.
"I just won't talk about the scene at this time," Calvert said. "We'll just let that go. This is just a hideous situation, and it's misfortunate. We really don't have a clear motive as to why the subject did this."
Calvert said the relationship among the victims still isn't clear, though two of them probably lived at the residence. He said there's no evidence his officers had responded to the location before Tuesday.
"The community where it happened, it's a rather new development," Calvert said. "It's very unusual to have any calls there, especially something of this nature."