Mississippi man in custody after 8 killed in rampage

BROOKHAVEN, MISS.— A man who got into an argument with his estranged wife and her family over his children was arrested Sunday in a house-to-house shooting rampage in rural Mississippi that left eight people dead, including his motherin-law and a sheriff’s deputy.

“I ain’t fit to live, not after what I done,” a handcuffed Willie Corey Godbolt, 35, told the Clarion-Ledger.

The gunfire erupted Saturday night at Godbolt’s in-laws’ home in Bogue Chitto after the deputy arrived in response to a domestic disturbance call, and spread to two houses in nearby Brookhaven.

Godbolt was hospitalized in good condition with a gunshot wound, though it wasn’t clear who shot him.

The slain deputy, William Durr, was a two-year sheriff’s department veteran and former police officer in Brookhaven, about 110 kilometres south of Jackson.

Mississippi Bureau of Investigation spokesman Warren Strain said prosecutors plan to charge Godbolt with murder, but it’s too soon to say what the motive was.

“My pain wasn’t designed for him. He was just there,” Godbolt said of the deputy.

“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.”

“They cost him his life,” he said, apparently referring to Durr. “I’m sorry.”

Godbolt’s 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 because of domestic violence.

Mitchell said he escaped along with Godbolt’s wife, but three others were killed: his wife, her sister and one of the wife’s daughters.

After fleeing his in-laws’ house, Godbolt killed four more people at two other homes, authorities alleged.