8 family members dead, including 4 children, following shooting, fire at Montana home: Police
Eight members of a family, including four children, were killed at a home in Montana where a shooting and fire occurred following a "family disturbance" on Sunday night during a dinner, police said.
The victims of the mass shooting at the Billings home were four generations of family members whose ages ranged from 7 to 92 years old, according to Yellowstone County Sheriff Kent O'Donnell.
The suspect, who was a member of the family, died in an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after he encountered officers at the residence, located outside Billings city limits, officials said.
Law enforcement responded to the home shortly after 6 p.m. after receiving a 911 call of an "active shooting event" and heard gunfire upon arrival, O'Donnell told reporters during a news conference Wednesday.
The house was on fire when first responders arrived, he said.
Officers encountered Alan Michael Smith, 44, who they alleged was the gunman, but he retreated back into the house, and they heard more gunshots, according to the sheriff.
Officers found Smith in the back of the house with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, and transported him to a hospital where he later died.
"It wasn't known [at the time] that he was actually the suspect of all this," he said.
The residence became consumed by fire amid challenging conditions that also included a lack of fire hydrants within the subdivision, he said.
"This is a county residence, so they do not have city services. All the houses are on wells," O'Donnell said.
"They had to haul in truckloads of water, set up a temporary tank, and pump out of that tank," he added.
The fire was put out in the early hours of Monday morning.
The sheriff said multiple fires were suspected to have started inside the 4,000-square-foot home.
O'Donnell said it took crews days to properly search through the rubble, but as of Thursday, all occupants who were inside the house were accounted for.
Evelyn Smith, 92, was the matriarch of the family and was visiting the house Sunday for the dinner, according to the sheriff. Her son Dana Smith, 73, owned the home with his wife Barbara, 72.
Dana and Barbara Smith's daughter Megan Ireland-Ghekiere, 39, who lived nearby, was in the home with her two children, Owen Ireland, 13, and Chloe Ireland, 7, and her two stepchildren, Landon Ghekiere, 15, and Charlotte Ghekiere, 12, O'Donnell said.
Not all of the bodies have been removed from the scene as of Wednesday afternoon, he said. No gun has been recovered, authorities said.
"I want to say it's just tragic, and it just tugs at me, and I know it tugs at the community that this is going on," the sheriff said.
Megan Ireland-Ghekiere's husband, Adam Ghekiere, told the Associated Press that he was working at his job at an airport in Billings when the shooting took place and rushed back to the Smith home.
The investigation into the shooting and fire is still ongoing. O'Donnell said the suspect was once a resident at the house, but at the time of the incident, he was not living there.
The sheriff said the community is trying to process and grieve through this tragedy.
He said that a memorial was set up near the house and neighbors and residents have been leaving mementos, including teddy bears, and a notebook with messages from the victims' friends, classmates and others.
"One of the first messages I noticed this morning was from a classmate, and they said that they would sorry that they wouldn't see them in school this year," he said.
