Family of six die in flash floods
THE man who killed seven people and wounded 22 others in a rolling rampage across West Texas on Saturday was fired from his trucking job hours before the massacre, media and officials reported.
Details about the Labor Day weekend shooting and the names of some of the victims were emerging online and from officials on Sunday and early yesterday.
Police continued to comb through 15 different crime scenes in neighbouring Midland and Odessa, Texas.
The gunman, identified by police as Seth Aaron Ator, 36, of Odessa, had been fired from his truck-driving job in Odessa on Saturday morning, the New York Times and other media reported.
Hours later, Ator was pulled over in Midland by Texas state troopers on Interstate 20 for failing to use a turn signal, police said.
Armed with an AR-type rifle, Ator fired out the back window of his vehicle, injuring one trooper.
Then he drove away, spraying gunfire indiscriminately, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement.
At one point, Ator abandoned his vehicle and hijacked a US postal van and mortally wounded the postal carrier, identified by postal officials as Mary Grandos, 29.
Ator was later cornered by officers in the parking lot of a cinema complex in Odessa. He was shot and killed.
“There are no definitive answers as to motive or reasons at this point, but we are fairly certain that the subject did act alone,” Odessa Police Chief Michael Gerke said.
Online court records showed Ator had convictions in 2002 for criminal trespass and evading arrest. The Midland Reporter-Telegram newspaper quoted a state lawmaker, Rep. Tom Craddick, as saying he had previously failed a background check.
Gerke offered his condolences to their families of the dead and wounded. “My heart aches for them all,” he said.
Among the dead was Grandos, who was at the end of her shift and on the telephone with her twin sister Rosie Grandos.
“She didn’t deserve this,” a tearful Rosie Grandos said.
“I was hearing her cry and scream for help. I didn’t know what was happening.” | FLASH FLOODS killed six family members and their tour guide at Kenya’s Hell’s Gate National Park, the state-run wildlife authority said yesterday.
The incident occurred on Sunday in the Rift Valley, some 100kms by road north-west of the capital Nairobi, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said on its Twitter account.
A Kenyan family of 13 had travelled from their homes in Nairobi and the western city of Kisumu for a holiday weekend on the shores of Lake Naivasha, one of the surviving family members said.
Although it had begun to drizzle when they decided to visit the national park’s gorge for a walk, park guides told them that the area was safe, said Ivraj Singh Hayer, 31.
When water began rushing through the gorge, some of Hayer’s family members managed to jump to one side while the flood swept away others, including his wife, nephew, four other relatives and their guides, and other anguished relatives clung to the stone face of the gorge, he said.
Two of those killed were children, he added tearfully.
“The guide was trying to save my nephew and they both slipped and were swept away by the floods,” he said. “For more than an hour the rest of us held tight before the water subsided and we managed to walk to safety.”
The bodies of those swept away were later found some 30km from the scene, KWS Central Rift assistant director Aggrey Maumo told reporters.
The park is famous for its gorges, cliffs and steam plumes from geothermal activity underground, and in areas adjacent to it the steam is harnessed to generate electricity.
The park has been used as a location for films such as Tomb Raider II: Cradle of Life, the Kenya Film Commission says.
Gorges in the park are prone to flash floods and have in the past killed visitors. In 2012, floods claimed the lives of seven who were part of a church group on a trek.
“We won’t close the gorges… This (accident) shouldn’t deter anyone from visiting this park,” Maumo added.
A local community leader blamed the accident on the impact of human activities on the environment.
Environmental degradation, mainly due to charcoal burning, has eroded the natural habitat, said Maenka Ole Kisotu.
“There’s no vegetation here and once it rains the floods sweep anything on the way,” he said. |