Pike County: Eight family members killed, gunman remains at large in Ohio

Police are still searching for the gunman responsible for the shootings on Friday.

Police tape is drawn across the crime scene in Pike County, Ohio. (John Minchillo/Associated Press)

At least eight family members are dead, including seven adults and one 16-year-old, after a series of “execution-style” shootings across a rural town in Ohio. Police believe at least one suspect is still at large.

Police said that the killings took place at four separate homes across Pike County on Friday. Three children survived the shootings, including a 4-day-old newborn, who was sleeping near its dead mother.

“This is a horrible, horrible tragedy," Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine told reporters at press conference, adding that it appeared the Rhoden family was specifically targeted.

"Obviously we have one person who is armed and dangerous and there may be more, two or three," Attorney General DeWine said. "We don't really know how many people we are talking about.”


 Emergency and media personnel arrive at Union Hill Road. John Minchillo/Associated Press
 (John Minchillo/Associated Press)

Phil Fulton, pastor of the nearby Union Hill Community Church, said that the mother and children previously attended church services at his house of worship.

“It was a mother, her former husband, their grown children and some grandchildren too. They all used to attend our church,” he told reporters.

The mother worked at a nursing home for the elderly, he said. She had just bought a new mobile home near the two existing trailers occupied by her ex-husband and her son, Fulton said. All three trailers are less than a mile apart on Union Mill Road, near Peebles, a town of nearly 2,000 people just 80 miles east of Cincinnati.

Ohio Governor John Kasich called the reports “tragic beyond comprehension.”

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is assisting the Pike County Sheriff’s Office in the ongoing investigation. Cincinnati’s FBI office also announced that it was closely monitoring the situation.

No arrests or motives were clear by late afternoon.