Eight people have been killed and several others wounded in a shooting at a nursing home in Carthage, North Carolina, police and hospital officials said Sunday.
Carthage Police Chief Chris McKenzie told CNN affiliate News 14 Carolina that there were six dead at the scene and three wounded, including a police officer. Gretchen Kelly, a spokeswoman for FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital, told CNN later that two of the six patients brought there had died, and two were still being treated. Few details of the shootings, which happened about 10 a.m. Sunday, were immediately available. There was no immediate indication as to the attacker’s motive, and it was not clear whether the gunman was in custody or was among the dead or wounded. “I ain’t never seen nobody being mistreated down there or nothing,” Bobby Dunn, whose 89-year-old mother was living at the facility, told News 14. “That’s what I can’t understand — why somebody would come and do something like that.”
McKenzie said the facility was “under our control” and patients had been moved to another building. Police were still interviewing witnesses early Sunday afternoon, he said. Carthage is about 60 miles southwest of Raleigh. See map showing Carthage, Raleigh ยป Sunday’s killings were the latest in a series of high-profile but unrelated rampages in March, including the killings of 10 people by an Alabama man who was then killed by police. At a southern Illinois church, a man shot and killed the pastor and stabbed two parishioners, and a 17-year-old in Germany killed 15 people in two small towns before dying in a shootout with police.
