Five children were among six people killed Tuesday in a rampage in a home in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Suspect Jarron Deajon Pridgeon, 25, has been taken into custody, said Lynn Hamlin, a Muskogee police officer.
“We don’t think it was random,” said Hamlin. “We just don’t have any details about why or what happened.”
The officers responded to a call around 1:30 a.m. about multiple shots at the house, Hamlin said. The officers encountered a person with a gun, and one officer fired a shot that missed the armed person as he ran from the scene, police said.
Pridgeon was later arrested after a brief foot chase. Hamlin said Pridgeon lives in the apartment and doesn’t cooperate with investigators.
Officials at the scene found a man and four children dead, Hamlin said.
“There was another woman … with another young child, and they were both taken to a Tulsa hospital for life,” she said. “This little child has also been pronounced dead.”
The woman is conscious and stable, said Hamlin.
Muskogee Public Schools released a statement Tuesday that two of the deceased children were students at Creek Elementary School and a third student was injured. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the third student was the child who later died.
“No words can adequately express our sadness at losing these students,” said Supt. Jarod Mendenhall. “Our thoughts and prayers are with this family.”
Hamlin, sometimes almost in tears when speaking briefly with reporters, expressed “shock, sadness” at the shooting. She said officials who responded to the scene would meet with departmental therapists.
Muskogee is a city of about 38,000 residents 50 miles southeast of Tulsa
Contributor: The Associated Press
