deadliest mass shootings<\/a> in recent years, police said.<\/p>\nTwo women, including the gunman\u2019s wife who was the mother of their children, were also shot and critically wounded, according to Shreveport Police Department spokesperson Chris Bordelon. Officials said the children \u2014 who were all killed in the same house \u2014 ranged in age from 3 to 11 years old.<\/p>\n
The gunman, identified as 31-year-old Shamar Elkins, died after a police pursuit that ended with officers firing on him, according to Bordelon. Authorities did not say what may have set off the violence but Bordelon said detectives were confident the shooting was \u201centirely a domestic incident.\u201d<\/p>\n
The attack was the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. in more than two years. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t know what to say, my heart is just taken aback,\u201d Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith said. \u201cI cannot begin to imagine how such an event could occur.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bordelon said police were familiar with Elkins, who had been arrested in a 2019 firearms case, but he said officials were not aware of any other domestic violence issues. <\/p>\n
Police said the attacks began before sunrise in a neighborhood south of downtown Shreveport when the suspect shot a woman at one home and then drove to the other location \u201cwhere this heinous act was carried out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seven children were killed inside the second house, and one was found dead on the roof after apparently trying to escape, Bordelon said. Another child jumped off the roof and was expected to survive after being taken to a hospital. <\/p>\n
State Rep. Tammy Phelps said some children tried to get away through the back door. \u201cI can\u2019t even imagine what the police officers, first responders actually dealt with when they got here today,\u201d she said at a news conference. <\/p>\n
Family member says suspect was separating from his wife<\/p>\n
The victims were three boys and five girls, according to the Caddo Parish Coroner\u2019s office. <\/p>\n
Shamar Elkins and his wife were in the middle of separating and were due in court Monday, said Crystal Brown, who is a cousin of one of the wounded women. Brown said the couple had been arguing about the separation before the shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe murdered his children,\u201d Brown said. \u201cHe shot his wife.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elkins shared four children with his wife and three children with another woman who lived close by and who was also shot, according to Brown. All the children were together at one house, she said.<\/p>\n
Brown described all the children as \u201chappy kids, very friendly, very sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n
A neighbor wakes up to a mass shooting <\/p>\n
Liza Demming, who lives two houses down from where most of the victims were shot, said her security camera captured video of the suspect running away along with the sound of two shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s pretty much all I saw, was him running out of the house and the cars leaving,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Demming later went outside and saw the covered body of a child on the home\u2019s roof. <\/p>\n
Pastor Marty T. Johnson Sr., of nearby St. Gabriel Community Baptist Church, who owns one of the homes where the shootings occurred, said a person who works for him had rented it to the family, but he never had dealings with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat began as a domestic dispute has ended in irreversible harm,\u201d the parish\u2019s district attorney\u2019s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Shreveport is overwhelmed by grief<\/p>\n
It was the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. since eight people were killed in a Chicago suburb in January 2024, according to a database<\/a> maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. <\/p>\nAt a news conference outside the residence where one of the shootings occurred, officials appeared stunned, requesting patience and prayers from the community as they sorted through multiple crime scenes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a tragic situation \u2014 maybe the worst tragic situation we\u2019ve ever had,\u201d said Tom Arceneaux, mayor of the city in northwestern Louisiana with about 180,000 residents. \u201cIt\u2019s a terrible morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hours after the shooting, mourners gathered outside the single-story house on 79th Street and laid flowers. One door appeared stained with blood. Later that evening at a nearby prayer vigil, Kimberlin Jackson joined other members of the community who lit candles for the victims in a parking lot. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt just makes you take your children and hug them and hold them and tell them how much you love them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
This story has been corrected to attribute the statements about the shooting to police spokesperson Chris Bordelon, not Police Chief Wayne Smith, and corrects the ages of the children killed based on updates by officials.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Contributing were Associated Press reporters Jake Offenhartz in New York, Jeff Martin in Atlanta, Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Terry Tang in Phoenix and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By SOPHIE BATES, LEKAN OYEKANMI, GERALD HERBERT and JOHN SEEWER SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) \u2014 A Louisiana father fatally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139,141,140,109,108],"class_list":{"0":"post-238535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-orlando","9":"tag-orlando-headlines","10":"tag-orlando-news","11":"tag-social","12":"tag-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}