Four Dead, Including 2 Kids, in Apparent Murder-Suicide on New Year's Day in South Carolina
Four people, including 2 kids, were found dead in a Lexington County, South Carolina, home on New Year's Day in what authorities believe to be a murder-suicide.
Lexington County authorities discovered four people who had been shot to death at their home on Old Barnwell Road around 8 p.m. on Sunday.
The four victims were identified as Marissa Hope Reynoso, 26, Jorge Luis Chavez, 25, and two of their children, 4-year-old Elijah Chavez and 1-year-old Ezra Chavez, Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher said in a press release, as reported by CBS News.
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The Lexington County Sheriff's office released a picture of Jorge Chavez on social media on Sunday night, confirming an ongoing search for him as a suspect in the incident.
A later tweet from the police stated that the search was over as Jorge Chavez was identified as one of the victims. But investigation of the case, which is being treated as a murder-suicide, is still ongoing.
"Situation on Old Barnwell Road appears to be a murder-suicide. Search for Jorge Luis Chavez is over. Our investigation is ongoing," read yesterday's Twitter post by the Lexington County Sheriff's office.
The coroner, Margaret Fisher, confirmed that all the victims had died due to gunshot wounds. Fisher also stated that Chavez and Reynoso have an older child who was not present at the home during the incident, according to Fox News.
This incident once again raises the issue of firearms availability in the United States and the increasing number of deadly shootings taking place each year. While mass shootings are the ones covered most extensively in the media, domestic violence, which claims a large number of victims too, is often ignored.
A New York Times report discovered that out of 358 shootings with four or more casualties in 2015, 39 were domestic violence cases which left 145 people dead and 40 injured.
Hopefully this trend will see a reversal in 2017 but, judging by the way the year has started, serious steps need to be taken to make it happen.
