Gunman kills ex-wife, five others in Mississippi shooting
A gunman has fatally shot six people, including his ex-wife, across several sites in a small rural town in the US south.
Armed with a shotgun and two handguns, 52-year-old Richard Dale Crum opened fire on Friday morning and killed a man in the driver’s seat of a pick-up truck parked outside a convenience store in Arkabutla, near the Tennessee state line, Tate County Sheriff Brad Lance said.
Police at the crime scene were then alerted to another shooting a short distance away. There, they found a woman, identified as Crum’s ex-wife, dead and her current husband wounded.
Police then found Crum outside his own home and arrested him. Behind his residence they found two handymen slain by gunfire – one on the road and the other in an SUV.
Inside a neighbouring home, they discovered the bodies of Crum’s stepfather and his stepfather’s sister.
‘Epidemic’
Friday’s attack in Arkabutla, a town of about 285 residents in northern Mississippi, marked the most recent mass shooting in the US, where such attacks have become strikingly common.
There have already been 73 such shootings, defined as having four or more victims, in the country in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The latest mass shooting in the country again prompted condemnation from US President Joe Biden.
“Enough,” Biden in a statement released Friday night. “We are 48 days into the year and our nation has already suffered at least 73 mass shootings. Thoughts and prayers aren’t enough. Gun violence is an epidemic and Congress must act now.”
