A FATHER who authorities say shot dead two adults and four children sank to his knees in surrender after a three-hour stand-off in the US with police.
Ronald Lee Haskell, 33, has been charged with multiple counts of capital murder after the rampage in the middle-class Houston suburb of Spring during which a 15-year-old girl was also wounded.
Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Thomas Gilliland said after a brief chase, the man held deputies at bay for three hours before he surrendered.
Mr Gilliland said the dead children were two boys, aged four and 14, and two girls, aged seven and nine and their parents, a 39-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman.
The gunman, who gained access to the house pretending to be a FedEx delivery man, was estranged from a woman related to the couple. Police said he was wearing a FedEx uniform though it is not yet known if he worked for the company.
The injured girl contacted authorities telling them the gunman was en route to shoot other family members.
The sheriff's department said officers were called to the house at around 6pm on Wednesday and found two adults and three children dead. Another child later died in hospital.
Assistant Chief Deputy Constable Mark Herman said: "It appears this stems from a domestic issue with a breakup in the family."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article