SANDY, Utah (AP) — Utah investigators and residents of a middle-class Salt Lake City suburb were trying Wednesday to understand what led a man to open fire on a woman and children inside a car — leaving the woman and one of her sons dead and two more children injured.
The suspect was found dead at the scene but police have not said how he died. He was in a relationship with the dead woman but was not the father of her children, authorities said.
The victims shot Tuesday afternoon were inside a car driven by a another woman who authorities said had picked up the female victim and her two sons to give them a ride “out of the area” moments before the attack as they walked alongside a road in the city of Sandy.
It was unclear what prompted the driver, who had a girl riding with her, to pick up the woman and the two boys and authorities did not say why the woman and her sons needed to get away.
But moments after the driver picked them up, police said, the suspect used his car to repeatedly ram the woman’s vehicle. Then he got out and opened fire before shooting himself. The woman who was driving the car survived and was not hospitalized.
The girl was injured and hospitalized and the other son of the woman who had been walking on the road was critically injured, authorities said.
The suspect was identified as Jeremy Patterson, 32. He had been in a relationship with the woman who was killed, 39-year-old Memorez Rackley, police said in a statement that did not disclose details about a possible motive. Authorities did not identify the female driver or her daughter.
The boy who died was a kindergartner at Brookwood Elementary School, about six blocks away from the location where the violence unfolded just after school let out for the day on Tuesday, said school district spokesman Jeff Haney.
The injured boy is a 5th grader and the injured girl is also a student of the school but Haney could not immediately provide more information about her.
Counselors were at the school Wednesday to help students and parents deal with the aftermath of the shooting, a day after parents who heard news of it rushed to the school to get their children.
Wednesday was also the elementary school’s last day before summer vacation. Teachers were trying to maintain end-of-school traditions, Haney said.
The shooting occurred in the quiet neighborhood with winding roads, nestled against mountains about 20 miles southeast (32 kilometers) of Salt Lake City.
Resident Colby Corbett was in his backyard waiting for his 8-year-old son to walk home from school when he heard 20 to 30 gunshots within a few seconds.
“I thought it was like a gun battle.”
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Associated Press writer Michelle Price contributed to this report.