Four children have died after a 15-year-old boy from Alaska shot and killed three of his siblings before turning the gun on himself, Alaska State Troopers wrote in a press release.
The tragic deaths occurred Tuesday afternoon. Local authorities received a report at 4:17 p.m. that shots had been fired at a residence in Fairbanks, the largest city in Alaska’s interior with a population of just over 30,000.
When troopers entered the home in the Skyridge Drive Subdivision, they found four youths inside, dead with gunshot wounds.
The parents of the children were not home at the time of the shooting, police said, but there were three other children in the residence who were not injured.
The three children who weren’t harmed were all under seven, while the deceased were aged five, eight, 17, and 15, according to Alaska State Trooper spokesperson Tim DeSpain. All the youths were siblings, DeSpain said.
A preliminary investigation revealed that the 15-year-old teen shot three of his siblings before shooting himself.
“He was found deceased with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound,” the police release reads.
DeSpain said the gun was a “family gun but beyond that, it’s all still part of the ongoing investigation.” He could not say if the 15-year-old had had any previous interactions with law enforcement, saying that would be part of the investigation. The question of motive is also on the minds of investigators.
The Office of Children’s Services has been notified about the incident and the four bodies are being transported to the State Medical Examiner’s Office, troopers said.
Clinton Bennett, a spokesperson for the state Department of Family and Community Services, under which Children’s Services falls, said by email that the office “will not provide any information due to rules and regulations involving the confidentiality of all involved in specific cases.”
The office also will “not provide any information involving a case with an open investigation,” Bennett wrote.
In Alaska, an average of 174 people die and 332 are wounded by guns each year, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, an American non-profit that advocates against gun violence.
Around 67 per cent of Alaskan gun deaths are ruled as suicides while 25 per cent are homicides, compared to a national average of 60 per cent and 38 per cent respectively.
Alaska has the highest rate of gun deaths in the U.S.
— with files from The Associated Press
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