Posted on 01/16/2014 7:36:38 AM PST by Gamecock
IRMO, SC — The Richland County Coroner’s Office is expected to release the names of the two adults and two children found dead in an apparent murder-suicide on Forest Walk Court in Irmo.
The Richland County Sheriff’s Department said police found a husband, wife and their two young children around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at a home at 1 Forest Walk Court in the Riverwalk neighborhood off Broad River Road.
According to Sgt. Curtis Wilson, spokesman for the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, the children were discovered in their individual bedrooms, and the two adults were found together.
Wilson said a handgun was found near the father. The sheriff’s department’s initial assessment is that the incident was a domestic situation. Wilson said authorities would investigate whether any previous domestic calls had been made to the house.
Police were called to the home by the man’s mother. Wilson said she had not heard from her son in a couple of days, went to the house, discovered the bodies and called authorities.
As of Wednesday, neither the sheriff’s department nor the Richland County Coroner’s Office would identify the victims. But Richland County property records show the house is owned by Sheddrick and Kia Miller, who bought the home in 2012.
Rachel Hinson, 25, said she had attended bible study at the family’s home and went to Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses with them. She described them as a good family. She said she thought each of the children was younger than 5.
Hinson’s grandmother lives near the family’s house.
“It’s confusing, and it’s not understandable why something like that would happen,” Hinson said.
South Carolina ranks worst in the nation when it comes to men killing women, according to a report by the Violence Policy Center in Washington.
The most-recent Midlands murder-suicide of this magnitude, in which four or more people were killed, was in 2011 when Chancey Foy Smith killed 27-year-old Amanda Peake and her two children in Lexington County’s Red Bank community before turning the gun on himself.
Can you use Google to find "most recent Midlands murder-suicide of X magnitude"? Did the writer think readers would immediately ask themselves, "How long has it been since the last time this happened, and who were the participants?" as if it's a trivia game?
I think the reporter and readers might just remember that kind of thing. “Wasn’t there that guy who killed his family just a couple years back, out in Lexington maybe?”
In the South long drawn out stories are the norm. Drives my wife crazy.
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