The owner of a Lake Hartwell restaurant was among three people dead after a Saturday night shooting that authorities called a domestic murder-suicide.
Hart County Sheriff Mike Cleveland told WLHR radio in Lavonia that deputies received a call late Saturday night reporting a shooting at Froh's at Lake Hartwell, a restaurant on Rock Springs Road.
Cleveland told the station that the alleged shooter, Sammy Chumley, came to the restaurant after closing, armed with a gun.
When the restaurant's owner, Jason Forkin, saw Chumley, "he ran into another room," Cleveland told the station. "He then ran outside into a covered outside dining area where Chumley caught up with him and shot him."
After shooting Forkin, the gunman went back inside and grabbed his ex-wife, restaurant employee Lauri Weaver Chumley, and forced her at gunpoint to leave with him, witnesses told the radio station.
Sammy Chumley then drove to a burned out house in Franklin County where the couple once lived, and shot and killed his ex-wife before turning the gun on himself, according to WLHR.
Cleveland told the station that while it's not clear why Sammy Chumley targeted Forkin, he believes the gunman though his ex-wife and Forkin were having an affair.
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