Wash. man kills family, self after standoff
BELFAIR, Wash. — A gunman killed four people in a home in rural Washington state before fatally shooting himself after an hourslong standoff, authorities said Friday.
The gunman had called an officer he had dealt with in the past to say he shot and killed his family near Belfair, across the Puget Sound from Seattle, Mason County sheriff’s Chief Deputy Ryan Spurling said.
A 12-year-old girl who survived has been taken to the hospital for an evaluation. She is related to the victims, police said.
“It’s a terrible tragedy,” Sheriff Casey Salisbury said.
Neither the gunman nor his four victims have been identified.
Authorities negotiated with him for about three hours before a SWAT team stormed into the house in a heavily wooded area and found the people dead.
The gunman “apparently came outside the home and shot himself,” Salisbury said.
Jack Pigott, who lives down the road, said he heard gunshots Thursday night but none Friday.
The couple who lived in the house about 25 miles southwest of Seattle were in their 40s and had been married for four or five years, Pigott said.
The wife had two teenage sons who were adopted from Russia during a previous marriage and a daughter adopted from China.
Pigott said the husband had a heating and air conditioning contractor business.
He had recently been hospitalized, Pigott said, but he didn’t know why. When he returned home, the man was on a lot of medications, he said.
Pigott said it was common for the family to do shooting practice and that’s what he thought when he heard the gunshots.
The shooting comes days after a man, 26, killed his parents and two sisters before killing himself at the family’s Phoenix home.