Multiple people killed in shooting at Montana home also set on fire, officials say

Multiple people – including children – were killed on Sunday evening in a Billings" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="193194" data-entity-type="event">shooting at a home in Billings, Montana, that was also set on fire, according to authorities and local media reports.Police have characterized the case as a family disturbance, according to Montana news outlet KULR.As of Tuesday morning, officials had not disclosed how many victims had died, their ages or their identities – beyond saying that there were “multiple, including children”.The suspect in the case was found outside the home with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. He was taken to hospital, where he later died.An online fundraiser for two victims – identified as minors – that was cited by multiple media outlets maintained that eight people were killed.An officer responded to a call reporting a shooter at a home in Billings’s west end area at about 6pm, the city’s police department said. The officer heard gunshots fired from the back of the house arriving and then saw the home fully engulfed in flames.The local Yellowstone county sheriff, Kent O’Donnell, told a news conference on Monday that all victims targeted in the shooting were dead – with “multiple adults and multiple juveniles” killed.O’Donnell said the victims have been identified. But the number of those killed, their names and their ages would not immediately be released. He had met with family members “from both sides of this”, he told KULR.Firefighters were dispatched but had to wait until officers had secured the scene – and they also may have faced water access issues, officials said. “The delay in limited access presented significant challenges, fire conditions continued to worsen and the residents ultimately became … consumed by fire,” Matt Hoppel, the Billings fire chief said at Monday’s news conference.O’Donnell added: “Because of the fire and obviously water that goes to suppress that fire, it’s going to slow our investigation of the crime scene recovery of evidence. So we ask for patience as we complete this investigation.”Details about a motive were not immediately released, and neither was an explanation for how the fire was started. Authorities have asked the public to avoid the scene as investigators continue to collect evidence, and they expected to provide another update on Wednesday.A statement from Billings police Sgt Jeff Stovall extended condolences “to everyone affected by this awful tragedy” while adding that authorities were intentionally limiting details about the case “to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation”.The killings in Montana came after five people were killed in rural Forest Grove, Oregon, by a man who then evidently died by suicide, according to authorities.Authorities on Tuesday identified the victims in that case as Mary Elizabeth Kimsey, 85; Rowan Karla Kimsey, 60; Stella Jade Kimsey, 26; Linsey Mae Haraldsen, 26; and Alvin Raymond Chu, 27, according to the local Washington county sheriff’s office.Their suspected killer was Benjamin C Parker, 36, who was the partner of Stella Kimsey, officials said. Rowan and Mary Kimsey were Stella’s mother and grandmother, respectively, they said.The killings in Oregon pushed the number of mass murders in the US for the year so far to at least 16, according to information from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan resource. If the number of victims in the Montana case is verified, that number would increase to 17 – including five in August alone.The archive defines a mass murder as cases in which four or more victims are killed.A substantial number of mass murders in the US fit the definition of a crime known as a family annihilation. That crime involves the killings of multiple close family members, most commonly by an armed male.US communities have historically perceived family annihilations in isolation. But a July 2023 Indianapolis Star investigation found they were occurring across the US every five days on average – and raised questions about why the country has not sought a nationwide strategy to mitigate the frequency of that particular type of crime.