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A TEXAS FATHER opened fire at a suburban Houston home overnight, killing four of his children as well as two adults who were with them, and critically wounding his 15-year-old daughter, authorities said.
The teenager was able to call 911 and later warned deputies that her father planned to go to her grandparents’ home to kill them, said Deputy Thomas Gilliland of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
The suspected gunman eventually surrendered after a three-hour stand-off with deputies who had cornered him in a nearby cul-de-sac.
The sheriff’s department said precinct deputy constables were called to the house in the northern Houston suburb of Spring about 6 pm and found two adults and three children dead. Another child later died at a hospital.
Killed were two boys, ages 4 and 14; two girls, ages 7 and 9; a 39-year-old man; and a 33-year-old woman, said Gilliland.
The gunman and his wife are estranged, and she was out of state, Gilliland said. Two of the dead children were adopted, he said.
“These children were all their children,” he said of the suspect and his wife.
“It appears this stems from a domestic issue with a breakup in the family, from what our witness has told us,” Assistant Chief Deputy Constable Mark Herman of the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office told reporters. He did not explain further.
Authorities also did not release the identities of the victims or the suspect, nor did they say whether the adults who were killed were related to the children or their father.
Gilliland said the teenager was in “very critical condition” at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston late Wednesday night.
After the 15-year-old survivor told deputies that her father was headed to her grandparents’ home, they were able to pass along the warning, he said.
Authorities said the teen’s information also helped them intercept the suspect. The suspected gunman then led authorities on a chase, with nearly two dozen deputy constables’ patrol cars following him into a cul-de-sac shortly before 7 p.m. There, the suspect’s boxed-in vehicle remained for hours. Finally, about 10 p.m., after hours of waiting and negotiations, the man emerged from his car, raised his hands and sank to his knees as deputies placed him under arrest.
During that time, Gilliand said, there were “two hours of constant talking with a man armed with a pistol to his head and who had just killed six people.”
Gilliland described the man as in his 30s with a beard “and cool as a cucumber.” He said that when he and other officers first approached, the man was “just sitting in his car looking out at us.”
“This concluded the way we wanted it to,” Gilliland said after the surrender.
Said Precinct 4 Constable Ron Hickman, “He was in the car for 3 and a half hours. He was worn down like the rest of us. He came out of the car without resistance.”
Danna Stevens, 75, and her husband, Texas Stevens, live four doors down from the home where the shooting happened but weren’t home at the time. She said she didn’t know her neighbours well and that they had moved into the subdivision about a year ago.
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Some truly horrific people out there
So horrific & sad. I would say well done to the teenager who raised the alarm but it seems totally inappropriate. The right to bare arms my arse.
What America really needs is more guns….
The pro-gun people will ask, why didn’t the kids have guns to protect themselves?
Whilst this is yet another terrible tragedy, the ongoing issue needs to be explored on a more deeper level. I think this is more of a social issue that the guns themselves. Every person in Switzerland has access to a gun but yet we don’t see the problems manifesting themselves as prevalent there as they occur in the US. You only need to sit yourself in front of a TV for an hour in the US and you will be BOMBARDED with adverts for all types of pharmaceutical drugs which are constantly being pushed at you 24/7. Statistics show that a huge percentage of these shootings occur by people who are on some form of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI’s) or other psychoactive drugs. But this issue is swept under the carpet because they don’t want to focus on the drugs as being the problem. It’s much easier to try and take the guns because the pharmaceutical industry in the US is worth too much money to the corporations and government.
Interesting perspective.
Where did you get the information about the SSRIs?
Hi Jim
It’s an issue I’ve been looking at for a while. You only need to type in “gun crime ssri” or a few keywords into google and theres lots of info there on it. You may want to look into more alternative sites as mainstream don’t want to focus on the problem being the drugs as much as the guns. Look at Canada, their next door neighbours, not much going on there in comparison to the US. Saw a very interesting documentary on that a few years ago. Can’t remember the name of it. If I do, I’ll let you know.
@ ciaran , can we take it these drugs aren’t widely used in Canada then ?
@James, that I’m not sure about, but there is obviously something fundamentally different going on when the statistics show gun crime way higher in the US than it is in Canada per capita.
Ciaran, fascinating. Thank you. Best post of the week, on any topic, by far.
This happens weekly in that country. And children kill their siblings or themselves with guns left lying around on a daily basis. Check out the weekly Gun Fail column on Daily Kos to see just how lucky we are that guns are not a ‘normal’ everyday part of our culture.
Sorry but anyone making a claim and when asked for evidence says “search on Google” can’t be taken seriously, even if you were to have done the research yourself, you should in theory have some figures saying X amount of people were on SSRI while X amount of people were not, then look at an average of people in america that take SSRI and put it against people in Canada and Switzerland and see if there is actually a higher percentage of people that take SSRI in America than in other countries.
Now even at that you wouldn’t have a strong correlation, considering that SSRI is given to people that suffer depression an anxiety and bipolar to name a few, which would make them more prone to do this, case in point, this happened after a “breakup in the family” which could exacerbate a depressive state.
I’m not saying SSRI aren’t to blame, I haven’t done the research so I don’t go around claiming ideas as facts, all I’m saying is try and find an actual link.
“post hoc ergo propter hoc”
@Lt. Shiny Sides.
I have done the research but I’m not here to educate people. That’s entirely up to you should you choose to. If you wish to go and do some research “like I did” you will find it if you look. I’m merely stating my point and how I arrived at said conclusion after researching the subject, ad nauseam.
By the way, isn’t that what you’re meant to do when you’re trying to research something? “Search on Google?” It’s certainly one of the first places I look anyway. Have you a better suggestion? Library perhaps?
I’m not saying that SSRI’s are totally to blame either but there is a substantial correlation between them and gun violence.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Oh here sure f*ck it I thought I’d have a look and low and behold I found this as a first hit on the Googles.
Antidepressant Use In Canada Among Highest In World: OECD
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/11/22/antidepressant-use-world-canada_n_4320429.html
I guess your “facts” need some rethinking
First website you looked at was the HP? Seriously. Did it ever occur to you that mainstream media posts are prioritised by SEO Search Engine Optimisation?
You need to try a little harder than that. I’m not getting into a debate with you over this is thats your argument.
All right here ya go, the original statistics taken by OECD
and just for balance this is the same for the americans too
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db76.htm
12% of people in America take antidepressants where 86/1000 take them in Canada making it well 8.6% so for every 4 shooting or so in america there should be around 3 in Canada, doesn’t seem to be the case.
This is also probably too mainstream media for you, but I tried searching for it on Naturalnews and all I was getting was articles saying that you can cure depression by eating carrots so unfortunately I wasn’t able to use them as a source.
Your reference to the OECD doesn’t address the case in point though. I was stating that a large amount of the people who take SSRI’s commit these acts. I wasn’t referring to the percentage of people in America who are on SSRI’s. We might have crossed wires somewhere.
Natural News is a good site.
Don’t underestimate the power of the carrot! lol
Yes that’s exactly what I was doing though.
We start from the idea that guns don’t kill people, people kill people with guns, if it wasn’t a gun it could’ve possibly done the same with a knife so we rule out the weapon as a reason for the killings, and blame the person’s state of mind (which is the correct thing to do I think)
Then the idea is That SSRI are to blame, so as the cardinal rule for scientific method we would need reproduction of the events, if we take another country that has the same gun laws we look at their use of SSRI to see if there is a correlation between mass killings and SSRI, if the correlation existed, the numbers would show very similar if not exact same figures, but it doesn’t, which means that SSRI aren’t to blame.
I’m not having a go at you don’t get me wrong, I’m just saying that it’s not as simple as blaming SSRI for it, especially when the data goes against it.
We’ll agree to disagree on the figures. I’m not saying that SSRI’s are totally to blame, I’m merely pointing out that a lot of the shootings carried out in the US are by people on some form or derivative of psychotropic drugs and that rather than looking at the guns, maybe we need to look at the reason as to why these unfortunate acts are becoming all to more common.
The references to Canada and Switzerland were merely to the gun crime per capita compared to the US.
Just looking here on that website you were looking at, Natural News. Have a read of this article and at the bottom of it, it lists some examples over the years of events.
Interestingly enough and to my surprise, the article is written my Mike Adams who in my opinion is well versed in these matters and someone I hold in high esteem.
http://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html
Let me know your thoughts on it.
Truly awful, beyond comprehension.
he had not got the balls to shoot himself
Awful. His head must have been one twisted up messy place. I imagine he’ll pay for it though, he’ll be sat in a chair that has a heavy duty cable attached to it. RIP to his family.
Jesus Christ!! Just wtf is so wrong in someone’s head to do this. I try to think about what he did and it sounds like something from criminal minds or csi not real life.
This is awfully sad… Critters.
..”critters” ? Really – ffs.
And they still spout about the right to bare arms ! Shocking waste of life
‘Murica
Ireland.
There not well over there it’s like a open air asylum
Guns.
Hoplopophobia,
The states have a hugely variable rate of gun crime despite the fact guns move easily north from the more savage crime-ridden conservative states of America. These places have infant mortality in the first year of sometimes double the northern states and on every kind of metric resemble third world countries. The conservative heartland, nearly all GOP. Gun worship is not enough they want to mine the border to keep little kids in the countries Reagan’s death squad allies disrupted many years ago.
What can be done?
I have absolutely no idea…..
Terribly sad situation. The man was obviously not in a stable state of mind when he carried this out. Hope he gets the help he needs…
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