Archive for March 28th, 2009
Gunman Kills 8 in Nursing Home
Carthage, North Carolina – North Carolina police are investigating whether the man accused of killing eight people in a nursing home shooting spree may have targeted the home because his estranged wife worked there, according to The Associated Press.
At 10 a.m. Sunday morning, while many residents of Carthage, N.C., were sitting quietly in church, police said 45-year-old Robert Stewart entered a local nursing home armed with multiple guns. Stalking from room to room, he shot several residents, even those bound to wheelchairs.
By the time the only on-duty officer for the Carthage Police Department arrived at the Pinelake Health and Rehab Center and put a stop to the massacre, seven nursing home patients and one nursing home employee had died.
“He came in with a shotgun, a rifle and a couple other kinds of weapons and he just went around shooting people, people in wheelchairs and this type of thing,” Sen. Harris Blake of the North Carolina State Assembly said. “This could not be any more barbaric.”
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )3 dead in suspected murder-suicide in Firestone
The incident, which led to a three-and-a-half hour standoff and prompted the partial evacuation of the Eagle Crest subdivision in Firestone, ended after members of the Weld County Regional SWAT team entered the residence at about 9:15 a.m. on Saturday to find the three people involved already dead.
Firestone police first learned of the incident at 5:37 a.m. Saturday morning when the 24-year-old daughter of Sharla Acker, 41, called 9-1-1 after hearing a single gun shot while in her mother’s house on the 10000 block of Barron Circle in Firestone, according to Weld County Coroner Chris Robillard. Less than 10 minutes later, Firestone police were on scene working to get Sharla Acker’s daughter and 3-year-old grandson out of the house through a window, Robillard said.
The daughter and grandson were unharmed.
Police then evacuated a quarter of the subdivision and closed entrances into the subdivision until 11 a.m. in the event that a man had barricaded himself inside the residence.
Robillard, however, said the incident likely ended shortly after it began — with Sharla Acker’s ex-husband Michael Acker, 47, of Commerce City, suspected of using a shotgun to kill Sharla Acker and her boyfriend Michael Frederico, 38.
Michael Acker and Sharla Acker divorced in fall 2008, Robillard said. The incident is still under investigation and autopsies are planned for today. More on Greeley Tribune
Gun Deaths in the United States 