When parents kill: Forensic psychiatrists examine the motives behind unthinkable murders | CNN

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article contains graphic descriptions of child murder, suicidal ideation and an attempt to die by suicide. Gunfire shattered the silence of the Cedar Grove community in Shreveport, Louisiana, just before dawn Sunday. Moments later, a mother and her two children scrambled out of a window and onto the roof of an unassuming gray and white home on West 79th Street and frantically dialed 911. “Units be advised,” a dispatcher relayed to officers, “the female is saying there’s nine subjects that live inside the residence.” “(She’s) saying he may have shot them all.” Police arrived at the home to discover a scene that officials were still struggling to describe days later. Eight children were dead. The suspect, later identified as 31-year-old Shamar Elkins, shot and killed seven of his own kids; the eighth child was their cousin. Elkins also shot his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh, and Christina Snow, the mother of three of his children. His sister-in-law and another child also sustained injuries in the attack. Elkins later died after exchanging gunfire with police. Sunday’s massacre in Shreveport marks the deadliest mass shooting in the United States in more