Gunman’s rampage kills 8 people in Mississippi
Miss. — A man who got into an argument with his estranged wife and her family over his children was arrested Sunday in a three-house shooting rampage in rural Mississippi that left eight people dead, including his mother-in-law and a sheriff’s deputy.
“I ain’t fit to live, not after what I done,” a handcuffed Willie Corey Godbolt, 35, of Bogue Chitto, Miss., told a reporter with The Clarion-Ledger who took video from the scene of the arrest.
The gunfire started Saturday night at Godbolt’s inlaws’ home in Bogue Chitto, about 70 miles south of Jackson, after the deputy arrived in response to a domestic disturbance call, and spread north early Sunday to two houses in nearby Brookhaven.
At the first location to which police were called at
11:30 p.m. Saturday, authorities found three female victims and the sheriff’s deputy, according to The Clarion-Ledger. They found two male victims at a house in Brookhaven, and a man and a woman at another house in Brookhaven, the newspaper reported.
The dead included two boys, investigators said. Godbolt was hospitalized in good condition with a gunshot wound, though it wasn’t clear who shot him.
“Everybody that got killed was related to him, except the deputy,” said Johnny Hall Sr., a longtime member of the New Zion Union Missionary Baptist Church in Bogue Chitto, where he said Godbolt also was a member.
Authorities gave no details on Godbolt’s relationship to the victims, nor did they identify any except for the slain deputy — William Durr, 36.
However, a witness and Godbolt himself shed some light on what happened, with Godbolt giving an interview to The Clarion-Ledger newspaper as he sat with his hands cuffed behind his back on the side of a road as officers stood by.
Godbolt said he was talking with his wife and inlaws when somebody called authorities.
“I was having a conversation with her stepdaddy and her mama and her, my wife, about me taking my children home,” he said. “Somebody called the officer, people that didn’t even live at the house. That’s what they do. They intervene.”
“My pain wasn’t designed for him,” Godbolt added, apparently referring to the deputy who was killed. “He was just there. [The call] cost him his life. I’m sorry.”
When Therese Apel, the reporter with The Clarion-Ledger who took the video, asked Godbolt what would be next for him, he responded: “Death.”
“My intentions was to have God kill me. I ran out of bullets,” he said. “Suicide by cop was my intention.”
The stepfather-in-law, Vincent Mitchell, told The Associated Press that Godbolt’s wife and their two children had been staying at his Bogue Chitto home for about three weeks after she left her husband.
When the sheriff’s deputy arrived at the house, Godbolt looked as if he were about to leave, then reached into his back pocket, pulled a gun and opened fire, Mitchell said.
Mitchell said he escaped along with Godbolt’s wife. But he said three family members were killed in his home: his wife, her sister and one of the wife’s daughters.
“I’m devastated. It don’t seem like it’s real,” Mitchell said outside his house in Bogue Chitto, a wooded community of fewer than 600 people.
Godbolt then fled toward Brookhaven, a city of about 12,500 people. At least seven hours elapsed between the first shootings and Godbolt’s arrest near the final crime scene.
“It breaks everybody’s heart,” said Garrett Smith, a 19-year-old college student who said he went to high school with one of the victims. “Everybody knows everybody for the most part.”
Durr, the slain deputy, had served two years in the sheriff’s office and previously worked as a Brookhaven police officer. Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing said Durr was married and had an 11-year-old son.
Off duty, he was a ventriloquist who took his puppets to schools and churches and performed for children.
“He had a heart of gold,” Rushing told The Daily Leader. “He loved doing anything with kids. He would go out of his way to help anybody.”
Two weeks ago, Durr entertained preschoolers at Brookhaven Academy, a Christian school in town. The message he shared was that people, like fireflies, can use their inner light to help those around them.
“His character, top-notch,” said Page Nelson, the school’s elementary principal.
In a statement, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant thanked the law enforcement agencies that responded to what he called the “tragedy in Lincoln County.”
“Every day, the men and women who wear the badge make some measure of sacrifice to protect and serve their communities,” he said. “Too often, we lose one of our finest.”
The Rev. Eugene Edwards of the Bogue Chitto church said Sunday he had known Godbolt for 19 years.
“He had a very bad temper,” he said. “If you didn’t think like he thought, he’d get upset with you.”
Several of the victims had connections to the church, which has about 130 members, he said. Services went on as planned on Sunday.
“We pastors know that a lot of times things turn out like this,” he said. “Evil is not going to go around all the time. Sometimes it comes in the door.”
Information for this article was contributed by Kevin McGill, Russ Bynum and Jeff Amy of The Associated Press; by Daniel Victor and Ellen Ann Fentress of The New York Times; and by Amy B. Wang of The Washington Post.