The whacky world we live in. Emory Texas shooting (merged)

[Reborn]

3 Dead, 2 in Custody After Reports of Fire, Shooting at Texas Home
Saturday, March 01, 2008
EMORY, Texas — Authorities say they have found the bodies of an adult and two children at a rural East Texas home where they had gone on a report of a shooting and a fire.

Rains County Chief Deputy Kurt Fischer says one adult also was hospitalized early Saturday, and two people have been taken into custody. He says police received reports of a fire and a shooting at the house around 4 a.m.


This is on the news as I type this. It appears everyone was shot with a shotgun. I grew up in this small town. I think the populationg was less than 600 when I left, some 35 years ago.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[retsupt99]

Shooting is bad, but really nasty when innocent children are killed...hope the culprits pay heavily!

[Janq]

Population of a given town has nothing to do with nothing.
Crazy people and criminals are everywhere.
Just like car accidents and unintended pregnancy the odds are as much will hit someone that resides on everyones block at one time or another in life if one lives long enough. Of course how long 'enough' is varies from person to person and town to town, per population.

:(

- Janq

[The Arverni]

We live among land-sharks. Always be prepared.

[abuttermilk]

"Population of a given town has nothing to do with nothing."
"Of course how long 'enough' is varies from person to person and town to town, per population."
Did we just contradict ourself or what? Government double speak?

[mojust]

More serious social derangement. This country is turning into something Mad Max might wander into.

[gwhall57]

More bad news - it was the daughter and her boyfriend, plus some friends, that attacked her family, because she had been forbidden to date the boyfriend...

Mother and two siblings killed. Father shot multiple times, but managed to escape and crawl to a neighbor's house.

Teen angst turned deadly.


Attack on family shocks Texas community

By PAUL J. WEBER, Associated Press

EMORY, Texas - A weekend ambush left a mother and her two sons dead and the father wounded, a grisly shooting and stabbing attack authorities say was carried out by the family's teenage daughter and the boyfriend her parents disliked.


"We feel confident that the motive was the fact that the juvenile daughter and one of the individuals in custody were dating and that the parents were attempting to break the relationship up, which led to the crime that was committed," Rains County Sheriff David Traylor said Sunday.

The 16-year-old girl joined her boyfriend and two others in killing members of the Caffey family in their bedrooms before setting the house on fire, authorities said, confirming what most in this rural farming town had known since the pre-dawn attack Saturday.

The lone survivor was Terry Caffey, the father. He was shot five times — including twice in the back — before he dragged himself through the woods in search of help. He awaited surgery Sunday to remove the bullets, Traylor said, and an update was not available Monday morning.

Killed were Penny Caffey, 37, and sons Tyler, 8, and Mathew, 13.

The girl, who was not identified because of her age, was arraigned Sunday on three counts of capital murder and being held on $1.5 million bond. Charlie James Wilkinson, the girl's 19-year-old boyfriend, and two others, Charles Allen Waid, 20, and Bobbi Gale Johnson, 18, were arraigned on the same charges.

Waid, Johnson and Wilkinson were being held in Rains County jail on $1.5 million bond. The Caffeys' daughter was being held in neighboring Hunt County's juvenile detention center. Traylor said he wasn't aware if they had attorneys yet.

The killings gripped everyone and everything in Emory, from the Sunday morning church services to lunch conversations at small cafes along the two-lane road running through this town of just 1,500.

Classmates of the Caffeys' daughter and Wilkinson described the couple as inseparable and with few other friends on campus. Stunning most here was the arrest of Johnson, who was widely described as a good student active in theater at Rains High School.

Jennifer McClanahan, a senior at Rains, said that Wilkinson had been scolded during her English class last week for being on the computer. Wilkinson, she said, in turn told the teacher that her girlfriend's father had hacked into his MySpace page.

McClanahan and others said Wilkinson was not really a troublemaker, other than constantly being told to remove the cowboy hat he always wore to school.

"That's Charlie," said McClanahan, 17. "He would start an argument over something like a hat."

Carl Johnson, a friend of the family, said the Caffeys moved about two years ago to just outside Emory. He called them good Christians and said he often told the daughter he wanted her soft singing voice to perform at his funeral.

"(The parents) didn't like the boy and were trying to break them up," Johnson said. "They told me at church they didn't have any use for him."

The attack occurred on about 20 acres of pine-canopied, remote land in Alba on a narrow gravel road with just two other homes. The area is so secluded that even the closest neighbors reported only faintly hearing what sound liked thunder early Saturday, and few saw the blaze.

Authorities said that Terry Caffey crawled 300 yards to his closest neighbor to get help, leaving a bloody trail. He was shot in the head, twice in the back and twice near his shoulder, Traylor said.

The Rev. Todd McGahee of Miracle Faith Baptist Church, where the Caffeys worshipped and were the house musicians, wept and struggled to stay composed during his Sunday sermon.

"When I first heard, I was like, I don't even think I would have crawled out of the house," McGahee told his congregation. "But God has a purpose for Terry's life. God has a reason. God gave him the strength to get out."

One gun and one knife were used in the attack, Traylor said. He would not detail which suspects he believed were responsible for which acts, saying only that all four were there at the time.

Police found the daughter hiding in the home of one of the suspects, Traylor said.

The family members were asleep in their bedrooms when the ambush began, Traylor said. Penny Caffey and Mathew suffered gunshots and stab wounds; the youngest, Tyler, had only stab wounds.

On the Caffeys' wooded plot, the family's black Labrador waited in vain by the ashes of the incinerated house and a burned van for his owners to return.

"There's been a change in this church and a change in this community," McGahee told about 80 worshippers. "And we can't just wish it away. ... It will be the same loss, the same hurt tomorrow. There's been that change in our lives."

[goldshellback]

Tragic, sad,.......there are no real words, only questions.

It's Texas, maybe they'll (including daughter) will fry for thier acts.

[OPFOR]

Burn. In. Hell.

[Slimz13]

As bigoted and prejudiced as this sounds.. this sounds like something a religious terrorist would do.. not a kid and her disgruntled friends..

Its so hard to believe... can you imagine stabbing your 8 yr old brother to death?


Clean up the mess. Fry them all.

[archer51]

Is it just me or does it seem like young people today have so little regaurd for life? This girl appears to be from a good family, was home schooled until recently, so apparently it can't be blamed on the schools she attended. To murder your parents and siblings, over a boy/girl friend, I just don't understand.

Students shocked that peers held in killings - Crime & courts - MSNBC.com

[Mercalf]

Turning into Japan (voilence, suicides, etc). I just finished grade school last year, and I can vouch that childhood is not what it used to be. From day 1 of highschool, it's teachers pressuring you for PSAT, then the SAT, then grades, then attendence, school starting earlier, college visits, peer pressure, popular crowds, etc etc etc.

On a smaller note - middle school and elementary now do the work of 8th graders. (My sister is in 4th grade). She (sister) is expected to do math that I was doing in 7th grade (I was in the gifted program as well, she is not) - and it's becomming rediculous. She's in dance classes 3 days a week, and has ON AVERAGE 3 and a half to 4 hours of homework every night. Plus, she's had maybe 1/10th the field trips/ fun days I had at her age.

Point? Childhood fun is desolving. It's no longer existing. Adults, parents, and teachers are raising their kids into adults too early. They're not ready, and they can't handle the stress. There are incidents regarding popularity, incidents regarding family issues....But whatever the cause - it can be solved.

Parents really need to talk to their kids. NOT ABOUT DRUGS. But about their life. How they're doing OUTSIDE of school. Give them some money to have fun. Let them skip school if they get good grades one week. Anything - but the pressure at that age is immense for students. In the big picture it's not - but what you have to realize is that for kids, IT IS.

2 cents from a recent high school grad :S