A US man apparently murdered his wife and three small children before fatally shooting himself, police in the eastern state of Maryland said on Saturday.
Christopher Alan Wood, 34, was believed to have slain his wife Francis Billotti-Wood, 33, their boys aged five and four, and their two-year-old girl at the couple’s home in Middletown, Frederick County, sheriff’s department corporal Jennifer Bailey said.
“We are investigating this as a murder-suicide,” Bailey said. “The investigation indicates that Mr Wood killed the members of his family and then himself by an apparent gunshot wound.”
The family members may have been slashed or hacked to death, but Bailey only said the victims “sustained traumatic cut injuries.”
The two boys were found in their beds, while the mother and the two year-old girl were found together in the master bed, Bailey said.
Police found Wood at the foot of the master bed with a shotgun nearby.
Authorities removed several notes from the crime scene — apparently written by Wood — but Bailey would not immediately comment on their content.
Police “have not determined a motive at this point,” Bailey said, adding that agents removed the shotgun as well as items that could have been used as a weapon from the home.
The Wood residence is located in the center of a town of 3,000 known for horse and dairy farms in a bucolic valley 64km northwest of Washington. Middletown is just southwest of a larger colonial-era town, Frederick.
They had moved into their house four months ago, police said.
The family attended the Holy Family Catholic Community church in Middletown and had not been seen since Easter, the local newspaper, the Frederick-News Post, reported.
The woman’s father found the bodies when he visited his daughter’s home on Saturday morning after days of not hearing from her, police said.
The church’s priest, Kevin Farmer, told the paper that Francis Billotti-Wood taught religion classes at Holy Family.
Christopher Wood was employed by the CSX Railroad company.
A spate of high-profile mass killings in the US in recent months — including half a dozen rampages since last month — shows the impact the economic meltdown is having on rising violence, experts said.
In Binghamton, New York, a jobless immigrant early this month went on a murderous rampage in the center where he learned English, mowing down 13 people before killing himself.
The massacre was followed a day later by the murder of three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they were shot dead as they responded to a domestic disturbance call.
On March 29, a heavily armed gunman shot dead eight people at a North Carolina nursing home, days after six people were killed in an apparent murder-suicide in an upscale neighborhood in California’s Silicon Valley.
A day earlier, US media reported a brutal scene discovered at a Boston home — a man had stabbed to death his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his five-year-old sister and began stabbing another sister before being shot by police.
Direct correlations may not always immediately surface, but criminologist Jack Levin, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, said the trends are clear.
“Catastrophic losses serve as inspiration, or precipitant,” he said.
In a severe recession there are simply more people suffering such a loss, he said.
In an economic downturn, the US often sees “many more large-body-count murders — on the job, in the family — as many more Americans feel desperate in a situation they feel got completely out of control,” he said.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
CONFLICTING REPORTS: Beijing said it was ‘not familiar with the matter’ when asked if Chinese jets were used in the conflict, after Pakistan’s foreign minister said they were The Pakistan Army yesterday said it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border. At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children. Pakistan’s military said in a statement yesterday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly