Eight relatives slain in Ohio shootings

Eight members of a family, including a mother sleeping in a bed with her four-day-old baby next to her, were fatally shot in the head on Friday, leaving their rural town terrified while a manhunt was launched for whoever killed them.

Three children, including the newborn, survived the grisly killings that left seven adults and a 16-year-old boy dead in Pike County, said Attorney General Mike DeWine and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader at a news conference. The economically distressed county in the Appalachian Mountain region, which has about 28,000 residents, is located 130 kilometres east of Cincinnati.

DeWine and Reader said they were in the early stages of their investigations covering four crime scenes.

DeWine said there were no indications that any of the victims, identified as members of the Rhoden family, had died by suicide.

The whereabouts of the shooter or shooters weren’t clear, and authorities were warning relatives and area residents to take precautions.

“There may be more than one, there may be three. We just don’t know at this point,” DeWine said.

Some of the victims were in bed, indicating they were shot while sleeping, police said. Authorities said some, but not all, were killed in bed.

“It’s heartbreaking,” DeWine said. “The one mom was killed in her bed with the four-day-old right there.”

A motive wasn’t clear, authorities said, but they urged other members of the Rhoden family to take precautions, and Reader advised all Piketon residents to stay inside and lock their doors Friday night.

“This really is a question of public safety, and particularly for any of the Rhoden family,” DeWine said.

The first three homes where bodies were found are within a few kilometres of one another on a sparsely populated stretch of Union Hill Road, while the eighth body was found in a house within 50 kilometres, the sheriff said.

The other surviving children were six months old and three years old, authorities said.

Police did not release any information as to whether there were multiple weapons used or whether anything was missing from the homes.

Goldie Hilderbran, 65, said she lives less than two kilometres from where she was told a shooting took place.

“I first heard about it this morning from our mail carrier,” she said.

Hilderbran said the mail carrier told her deputies had stopped her from delivering mail in the area they had blocked off.

“She just told me she knew something really bad has happened,” Hilderbran said.

Gov. John Kasich, campaigning in Pennsylvania for his Republican presidential bid, said his office was monitoring the situation in Pike County.

“Reports we are receiving from (the nearby village of) Peebles are tragic beyond comprehension,” Kasich wrote on his Twitter account.

The FBI in Cincinnati said it was closely monitoring the situation and had offered assistance to the Pike County sheriff’s office if needed.

Peebles High School imposed a precautionary lockout Friday morning after authorities notified the superintendent of shootings that had occurred a few kilometres away, according to Regina Bennington, secretary to the superintendent for the Adams County Ohio Valley Schools district.

High school officials said the school was back to normal operations later Friday morning.

Piketon is the site of a Cold War-era uranium plant that was closed in 2001 and is still being cleaned up.