SHREVEPORT, La. — A couple hundred neighbors and local officials gathered for a candlelight vigil late Monday under a grove of trees near where eight children were shot and killed Sunday in an act of domestic violence that shocked this city.
“God we ask now that you would have mercy on us. Lift this city, this family,” organizer Betenia Golden prayed.
Golden, a minister and local radio host, prayed for an end to domestic violence, for the children who had died and for their young friends. “We come against the spirit of rage, of murder,” she said.
Shamar Elkins, 31, the man who fatally shot the eight children, most of them his own, also shot two women who are the mothers of the children. Relatives at the vigil reported the two women, Shaneiqua Pugh and Christina Snow, along with a third woman and a child who jumped to safety from a rooftop, were in good condition at local hospitals.
After he attacked the women and children “execution style,” Elkins stole a car and led police on a chase to nearby Bossier City. He died after police shot at him, but it is not clear whether he was killed by police or he took his own life.
Elkins, who served in the Louisiana Army National Guard, visited the local Veterans Affairs hospital for a mental health evaluation, stayed there for a week and a half and was released, said Crystal Brown-Page, a cousin of Elkins’s brother-in-law, Troy Brown.
Elkins’s wife, Shaneiqua Pugh, 34, told him she was seeking a divorce, and they were due to appear in court Monday, Brown-Page said.
“I think that triggered something in him,” she said, but the couple had not argued the previous week and he had not been violent in the past. “There were no previous signs.”
Speaking to the media Monday, Shreveport police officials offered few new details about Elkins, who worked for UPS loading trucks. He used a pistol in the shootings that operated like “an assault-style weapon,” according to Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith. Authorities are still investigating how Elkins obtained the weapon, he said.
Officials at the news conference Monday morning repeatedly stressed their efforts to tackle domestic violence, which Shreveport City Council member Grayson Boucher called an “epidemic.” Just over a week ago, the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office announced the opening of a domestic violence unit, Sheriff Henry Whitehorn said.
“I don’t believe any of us could have imagined that, only days later, our community would be shaken by the most heartbreaking tragedy that we have ever witnessed,” Whitehorn said.
Troy Brown, 46, who lived with Elkins and whose 10-year-old son was also killed in the rampage, said he hadn’t seen any signs of imminent violence.
“He had his head on straight, talking about the things he was going to do right, being a good dad,” Brown said, adding that the night before the shooting, when Brown left to work night shift, Elkins joked with him as he moved his car to let Brown pull out.
“He was calm. It’s like he had no cares in the world,” Brown said.
The shootings took place at multiple locations early Sunday morning, left eight children dead, two adult women wounded — the mothers of his children — and another woman and child injured. Shaneiqua Pugh was the mother of four of the dead children. Christina Snow, 31, was the mother of three others, and the eighth child was Elkins’s nephew.
The victims were Jayla Elkins, 3; Braylon Snow, 5; Shayla Elkins, 5; Kayla Pugh, 6; Khedarrion Snow, 6; Layla Pugh, 7; Mar’Kaydon Pugh, 10; and Sariahh Snow, 11, according to the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office.
The youngest child killed Sunday, a daughter of Elkins, had just turned 3 last month and was small for her age, according to relatives, which could be why police initially described her as younger.
Soon after the shooting, a relative received a frantic phone call from Mar’Kaydon Pugh’s mother, Keosha Pugh, who was injured along with her 12-year-old daughter when they jumped from the roof of the house in an attempt to flee.
“She was yelling in the phone, saying ‘He done shot the kids, he killed the kids,’” Brown-Page said.
She rushed to the scene, where she found the 12-year-old covered in blood: “She was trying to help her brother.”
Two of the women whose children who were killed — the gunman’s wife, Shaneiqua Pugh, who was shot multiple times; and her sister, Keosha Pugh, who was living with them and was injured fleeing the shooting — were both still hospitalized on Monday, relatives said.
“The family has been able to talk to her. Basically, she asked about her children,” said Brown-Page, referring to Shaneiqua Pugh. “They’re limiting the number of people who go in because they’re trying to keep her calm.”
Christina Snow, the mother of Braylon, Sariahh and Khedarrion Snow, was shot by Elkins at her house near to the home where the children were killed. Snow was recovering in the hospital Monday, in good condition, talking and alert, according to her father, Bulo Mays, 52.
He said it’s not clear when she will be released, or where she will live, Mays said. The doors of her house were still smeared with blood on Monday, her childrens’ bicycles and basketball outside, and her son’s school ID hanging from the rearview mirror of her SUV.
“She don’t want to go back to that house,” Mays said. He said his daughter told him Elkins showed no sign he was going to commit an act of such violence. “She said everything was good with them,” Mays said.
Brown-Page last saw Elkins and his wife Saturday night, when they stopped by her house. She didn’t notice anything was amiss. “They seemed good. They were together. There didn’t seem to be any issues,” she said. “Everyone is trying to figure out what sparked it.”
The post Relatives of mass shooting victims in Louisiana pray for end to domestic violence appeared first on Washington Post.
