Email
Print
Deadly shooting stuns neighbors
Donna Swicegood
Yellow tape marks the house where two people were found dead and two shot on Sunday.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: October 12, 2009
A man and his wife were found shot to death in their Mooresville-area home Sunday morning, and their two adult sons are in critical condition at a Charlotte hospital.
Iredell County Sheriff's Office Capt. Darren Campbell stopped short of calling the shootings a murder-suicide but did say the suspect was one of the two people dead inside the Peninsula Drive home.
No names were released by law enforcement on the scene, but a wooden plaque on the outside of the brick ranch-style house read Doug, Linda, Alan and Chris. The house is owned by Douglas and Linda Thomas.
Deputies from the sheriff's office responded to the house, on a quiet cul-de-sac off Stutts Road, off Brawley School Road, shortly after 8 a.m. Sunday. Campbell said they were responding to a cell phone call from inside 130 Peninsula Drive, and the caller said he had been shot. The caller reportedly told emergency personnel that his father had shot him.
Deputies arrived at the house but were initially unable to locate anyone. "They heard cries from inside the residence," Campbell said, and forcibly entered at that time. Inside, they found the man and woman dead, and the two young men, in their 20s, critically wounded.
He said one of the victims was found in a back bedroom, one in a hallway and another in the front room. He said he wasn't sure about the location of the fourth victim. The two shooting victims were taken out of the house by EMS prior to his arrival at the scene.
The two young men were taken to Lake Norman Regional Hospital and then flown to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. Campbell said both were in surgery Sunday afternoon, and detectives have not been able to talk with them about what happened.
Campbell said authorities are still attempting to determine exactly what happened, but evidence in the house leads them to believe the shooting suspect was one of the two people dead. "We are not actively looking for a suspect," he said.
As crime scene investigators and detectives spent most of the morning processing evidence, neighbors who ventured out said they were stunned by what happened.
"A life is precious," said Alina Adams, who lives next door to the house where the shootings occurred. "And to lose it is sad."
Adam Parzych, who lives in a development across Stutts Road from Peninsula Drive, said he was shocked to learn about the shootings. "It's very quiet," he said. "Everybody here is pretty close knit."
A couple of neighbors who live on Peninsula said they were saddened by the deaths of the couple and the shootings of the two young men.
One neighbor said she heard gunshots as she walked her dogs Sunday morning, but initially dismissed the noises as those from a nearby construction site.
"I was walking my two dogs, and they stopped in front of the house," said Wanda McKenzie, who lives just a couple of houses away from the scene. "I heard three or four gunshots."
She didn't realize the noise she heard was gunshots until she returned home and saw sheriff's office patrol cars flooding the neighborhood.
McKenzie said she didn't know the family well, but her son and the oldest of the two boys graduated from high school the same year.
She said the family lived in the brick house with green accents for at least 30 years. "One of my neighbors said it was one of the first houses in the neighborhood." she said.
McKenzie said she was stunned by what happened. "It's a shame," she said. She described the neighborhood as a peaceful one, in which neighbors felt comfortable leaving doors unlocked.
"We just had construction guys in and we had our doors open all week," she said.
She said the family attended The Cove Church as she did and she would see them at church. One of the two gray Honda Civics in the driveway had a Cove Church sticker on the rear.
Like McKenzie, Adams said she didn't know the family well, and her main contact was with the woman. "She was a very nice and sweet lady," she said.
She remembered her last conversation with the woman — just a couple of days ago. "She was laughing at me when I was planting my fig tree," Adams said. She said she'd never had luck with fig trees, but was trying again, and the neighbor stopped and talked with her about it. "We just bantered back and forth."
Adams described the woman's husband as a quiet man.
She said the two sons would visit frequently.
Adams said she didn't realize anything was going on next door until she saw deputies at the house, and heard a banging noise. That noise, she said, was the deputies breaking into the house.
Both Adams and McKenzie said they never heard any kind of problems.
Campbell confirmed that law enforcement never received any calls for service from the residence.
The two bodies were removed from the house and taken to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, where an autopsy will be conducted today, Campbell said.
He said he hopes the autopsies, along with information gained by talking with the two survivors, will give them an exact idea of what happened.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertisement
