(Reuters) – A man shot and killed seven people in a house-to-house shooting spree in a sparsely populated part of Missouri before shooting himself, the state Highway Patrol said yesterday.
Joseph Aldridge, 36, targeted family members in the bloody rampage, shooting four cousins who lived within a few miles of each other, officials said.
Aldridge’s mother was also found dead, though authorities said she may have died from natural causes.
The events unfolded around 10 p.m. on Thursday when the Texas County Sheriff’s Department responded to a call of a disturbance at a residence in the unincorporated community of Tyrone in the south-central part of the state.
A man who declined to be identified told a Reuters photographer that a 15-year-old girl in a nightgown had come to his house, running barefoot through a snowy wooded area and crying that her parents had been shot. Deputies found two dead at the girl’s home.
