After hearing screams and pounding at her front door, Kathy Peterson found a hysterical woman and three young girls cowering, one of the girls covered in blood.
She heard gunshots nearby in the middle-class Salt Lake City suburb as she opened the door and brought them inside to safety.
“He’s killing everybody and he’s trying to kill us,” the terrified woman told Peterson through tears.
Just outside the home in Sandy, Jeremy Patterson had shot and killed Memorez Rackley and her six-year-old son and critically injured her nine-year-old son, police said on Wednesday.
The shooting came three days after Rackley called in a harassment report to police on Saturday morning and asked them to tell Patterson to stop contacting her, Sandy police Sergeant Jason Nielsen said.
He declined to say what the outcome of the conversation was, or detail the nature of the harassment.
Authorities said the two were or had been in some sort of relationship and that the killings they described as targeted happened on Tuesday afternoon just after Rackley picked her boys up from elementary school.
Rackley was walking about six blocks from the school when she flagged down a driver — the same woman who showed up at Peterson’s door.
The unidentified female driver picked up Rackley and her boys, but her car was then rammed by a pickup truck driven by Patterson, who got out and opened fire.
Also shot and injured was the driver’s daughter, Nielsen said.
Patterson then killed himself.
The extent and nature of Rackley and Patterson’s relationship and the motive for the shooting remained unclear, Nielsen said.
Rackley was married to another man, but Nielsen did not provide more details.
Patterson was not the father of her children, he said.
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