Friends of the victims in Sunday morning’s East Ridge double homicide remember suspect Casey James Lawhorn as a troubled man but say they didn’t see tragic violence coming.
Lawhorn, 23, is accused of killing his mother, Vi Lawhorn, and 22-year-old friend, Avery Gaines, at a John Ross Road home, authorities said. His gold 2002 Ford Taurus, and later his body, were found near Interstate 59 in Mississippi after he posted a graphically detailed description of the shootings to a Facebook page confirmed to be his.
Casey James Lawhorn spends time with friends outside a dorm at MTSU.
Jasper County, Miss., Sheriff Randy Johnson said the body was found by a canine unit Monday in a wooded area about 100 yards from his broken-down vehicle, and Casey Lawhorn appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Though he wasn’t sure what evidence was collected by crime scene investigators, the sheriff thought syringes might have been found near the body, he said in a news conference late Monday afternoon.
Authorities did not find the body until early Monday morning because they did not feel safe sending a search party into the woods with a possibly armed murder suspect.