Gunman kills ex-wife, five others in Mississippi shooting

Friday’s assault passed off in Arkabutla, a city with about 285 residents in northern Mississippi, US.

A gunman has fatally shot six folks, together with his ex-wife, throughout a number of websites in a small rural city within the US south.

Armed with a shotgun and two handguns, 52-year-old Richard Dale Crum opened hearth on Friday morning and killed a person within the driver’s seat of a pick-up truck parked outdoors a comfort retailer in Arkabutla, close to the Tennessee state line, Tate County Sheriff Brad Lance mentioned.

Along with his ex-wife, the gunman additionally killed his stepfather and stepsister, in keeping with police.

Police on the crime scene had been then alerted to a different capturing a brief distance away. There, they discovered a girl, recognized as Crum’s ex-wife, useless and her present husband wounded.

Police then discovered Crum outdoors his own residence and arrested him. Behind his residence they discovered two handymen slain by gunfire – one on the highway and the opposite in an SUV.

Inside a neighbouring house, they found the our bodies of Crum’s stepfather and his stepfather’s sister.

Crum was jailed with out bond on a single cost of capital homicide, and Lance mentioned investigators had been working to deliver extra prices.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, who frequently receives high scores from the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation (NRA), an influential pro-gun lobbying group, mentioned he had been briefed on the newest assault.

‘Epidemic’

Friday’s assault in Arkabutla, a city of about 285 residents in northern Mississippi, marked the newest mass capturing within the US, the place such assaults have turn into strikingly frequent.

There have already been 73 such shootings, outlined as having 4 or extra victims, within the nation in 2023, in keeping with the Gun Violence Archive.

The newest mass capturing within the nation once more prompted condemnation from US President Joe Biden.

“Sufficient,” Biden in an announcement launched Friday evening. “We’re 48 days into the 12 months and our nation has already suffered a minimum of 73 mass shootings. Ideas and prayers aren’t sufficient. Gun violence is an epidemic and Congress should act now.”

The message echoed the identical exasperated tone struck by the president after a mass capturing at a Michigan college simply 4 days earlier left three college students useless.

In January, two high-profile mass shootings additionally occurred in lower than every week, each in California and involving the Asian American group.

Biden has made gun reform a precedence of his presidency, however efforts to spice up federal controls have lengthy been stifled by deeply entrenched political opposition.

Nonetheless, in 2022, Biden signed into regulation the primary federal gun management laws within the nation in a long time. Nevertheless, advocates mentioned the invoice fell far wanting a number of long-sought reforms, together with increased age restrictions for gun purchases and a federal ban on assault weapons.