The victim’s fiancé or husband and witnesses at the Express Mart provided similar suspect and vehicle descriptions. Sometime after, a patrol deputy spotted a vehicle matching the description in the driveway of a home on Arkabutla Dam Road, about 5 miles away from the Bend Road scene. When the deputy pulled up to the house, the suspect initially tried to drive away, but stopped and was taken into custody without incident, Lance said. Two handguns and a shotgun were recovered from the vehicle.
Deputies then discovered four deceased victims in the area of the Arkabutla Dam house, which Lance identified as Crum’s residence. Two victims, a woman and a man, were found shot to death in a residence behind the suspect’s house. Another man was found lying dead in the road between the two residences. The fourth victim, another man, was found dead from an apparent gunshot wound in the driver’s seat of a vehicle in the roadway.
Lance said authorities believe Crum was related somehow to the two victims who were found in the residence behind his house and that one of them may have been his stepfather. The other two victims are believed to be repair people who were doing work for the suspect or the victims killed in the house.
Lance said he could not comment on whether Crum had a criminal past or a history of domestic violence. A 2021 study by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence found that more than two-thirds of mass shootings are domestic violence incidents or perpetrated by individuals with a history of domestic violence.
The American Public Health Association says gun violence in the US is a public health crisis. It is a leading cause of premature death in the country, responsible for more than 38,000 deaths annually. As of Feb. 17, at least 2,406 people have died from gun violence this year, and another 3,168 have died by suicide, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. There have been at least 73 mass shootings, which the nonprofit defines as shootings where a minimum of four people are shot, in the US so far this year.
Mississippi has the highest gun death rate in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lance said homicides in Tate County are “very rare” and that he’s never seen anything “on this kind of scale.”
“A six-victim homicide is just unheard of here,” the sheriff said. “People that live [in Arkabutla] have lived there most of their lives and know each other and help each other. It’s just a shocking thing to have happen.”
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/skbaer/six-people-killed-arkabutla-mississippi-shootings
