MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (AP) – A man who expressed thoughts about suicide and was briefly hospitalized returned to a home and fatally shot his wife, her father and her stepmother before killing himself, police said.
Officers responding to a report of gunshots on Monday afternoon found the four people dead in the bedroom of a home in Murfreesboro in Rutherford County.
Sheriff Mike Fitzhugh said Sean Ganey shot his wife, Cassidy Ganey; her father, Kenny Adair; her stepmother, Shelly Lorenz-Adair; and then himself. A child was unharmed.
Deputies went to the home on Friday because of a call about a suicide threat. The sheriff said officers took Sean Ganey to a hospital and removed weapons from the home.
“The events that led to this I think are very tragic,” he said. “It’s a terrible outcome to a situation that we see far too often. It’s something that we don’t like to see.”
It’s unclear how Ganey got the weapon used in the killings.
Authorities said they were trying to piece together the sequence of events that led to the fatal shootings. They said marital strife may be to blame.
“We do think that there may have been a possibility of a divorce or at least comment of a divorce that may have led to this,” the sheriff said.