An unidentified gunman killed four family members then fatally shot himself after an hours-long standoff with police in rural Washington state on Friday, authorities said.
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Campbell “apparently came outside the home and shot himself”, Sheriff Casey Salisbury said.
“When children are involved, it’s always brutal”, he said.
Police say they received calls about four shot being fired at a private residence in Belfair.
A Washington State Patrol plane mounted with a camera circled above the home, giving police a bird’s-eye view during the standoff and for much of the afternoon.
On Saturday, Mason County Coroner Wes Stockwell released the identity of the shooter and three of the four victims.
Osterhout said the lone survivor, a 12-year-old girl, escaped or was released by the gunman before the suspect emerged from the house after hours of negotiations with law enforcement and a police SWAT team and shot himself in front of sheriff’s deputies.
The girl who survived was found on the property after the standoff and though not seriously injured was transported to an area hospital as a precaution, KING5 reported.
“The radio said he was down, but I don’t know what that means”, he said. It is not immediately known if she was the one who escaped the shooting.
A sheriff official shuts down a road near the site of the shooting.
Authorities said they found four other bodies in a chicken coop on the remote, wooded property near Belfair, on the Kitsap Peninsula southwest of Seattle.
Spurling said Friday evening that troopers had been making drawings of the scene, with plans to render a computerized reproduction of what happened. She also had a daughter who was adopted from China. Pigott also said that Campbell had recently been hospitalized for unknown reasons, and that he was taking a lot of medication after he was discharged.
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“I was getting a load of wood into the house, and I hear some gunshots”, he said. “Bang, bang, then a pause, then bang, bang, bang, bang”. “I never thought more about it”, Pigott said. She is “believed to be related to the shooting victims”.
