A married couple were killed and a third person was injured in a shooting at a Barrow County home early Thursday morning.
Neighbors called 911 to report hearing gunshots at a house on Kendall Park Drive near Winder around 5 a.m., Sheriff Judd Smith told reporters at the scene. When deputies arrived, they went into the house and first found a man with gunshot wounds. They got him outside and were working to clear the house when they located a 63-year-old man and a 66-year-old woman who also had been shot. They were pronounced dead at the scene. Their names were not released.
The injured man was rushed to a hospital, and Smith said his injuries did not appear to be life-threatening. Smith said he is thought to be the couple’s son.
“I do want to make it very clear to the public that we feel ... very confident that this was isolated to the home,” Smith said. “We don’t believe that there’s a suspect at large.”
No details about what led to the shooting have been released.
“We’re sifting through bodycam footage right now, when the deputies responded on scene, so we’re hoping to try to narrow down what happened,” Smith said, adding that they hope to speak with the injured man once his injuries have been treated.
Deputies obtained a search warrant for the house and were collecting evidence into the late morning.
“Just want to try to make sure we get all the evidence we can so we make a decent case because, obviously, these folks unfortunately died at the hands of another person,” Smith said.
Stephanie Hernandez, who has lived in the neighborhood for nine years, said heard about the shooting on the neighborhood’s social media page.
“As soon as I woke up, my phone’s like blowing up, people are saying, ‘Hey, we heard gunshots. Did anybody else hear anything?’” she said, adding that it was frightening to learn of the violence that played out in her normally quiet neighborhood.
Credit: John Spink / John.Spink@ajc.com
Credit: John Spink / John.Spink@ajc.com
“Never had anything, never had any issues, not even noise disturbances — nothing,” Hernandez said. “This is the first time that something like this has ever happened in this neighborhood.”
Smith reiterated the community’s quiet reputation.
“This is a relatively, I say, 10-, 15-, 20-year-old subdivision — good neighborhood; we don’t have a lot of problems here,” he said.
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