UPDATE: Those killed early Wednesday in a Forsyth County home include Rebecca Manning, 37 and her two sons, Jared Smith, 8, and Jacob Smith, 9. Manning's father, Jerry Manning, 75, is critical condition. The alleged shooter, who killed himself, was Matthew Fields, 32.
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He called his mother to say he’d shot four people and planned to kill himself. By the time Forsyth County deputies arrived shortly after 6 a.m. Wednesday, the alleged shooter was dead along with two young boys, according to police.
A Dawson County woman tried to convince her son, whose name was not released, not to kill himself as she drove to a small white house on Old Atlanta Road near Suwanee. Deputies were already at the home.
They found a woman on her knees on the front porch screaming. She said she had been shot, but deputies couldn’t see her wound at first because she was shot in the back.
“He’s dead,” she yelled, according to a preliminary incident report obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
That woman was taken to a hospital, but did not survive, police said.
Inside the home, the two boys, both under the age of 10, were found shot to death. The alleged shooter was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot and another man was critically injured, police said.
Hours later, investigators admittedly had no motive for the shooting spree that left a total of four people dead and one in critical condition, Forsyth Sheriff Duane Piper said during a 10 a.m. news briefing. Authorities, who described the shootings as domestic in nature, hoped to learn more while searching the home, Piper said.
“As the investigation goes on, of course, we hope to find some type of motive,” Piper said. “There’s no reason that any of us are ever going to understand to wipe out an entire family. We have absolutely no clue at this moment what precipitated it.”
All the victims, whose names were not released early Wednesday afternoon, lived in the house, said Piper, who added deputies have been to the home in the past. He wouldn’t divulge the nature of the previous calls, but The Associated Press reported the suspected gunman was known to officers from previous arrests and time in custody for unspecified crimes described as minor.
The white, single-story, ranch-style house where the shooting happened is on property that backs up to the Olde Atlanta Club, a golf course community of $500,000 homes along the Chattahoochee River. But the home was assessed at less than $50,000, online records show.
Just before 2 p.m., Old Atlanta Road remained closed in the area of Olde Atlanta Club, and the sheriff’s office urged motorists to avoid the area.
"The roadway will be closed for an undetermined amount of time," according to a Forsyth sheriff's Facebook post.
Tuesday’s shooting was the latest in a string of multiple murder-suicides in metro Atlanta this year.
In early January, Paulding County sheriff's Cpl. Samuel Driskell, his wife and 12-year-old daughter were killed, allegedly by the deputy's 21-year-old stepson, who then killed himself.
Later that month, a Cobb County woman killed her three children, ranging in age from 9 months old to 10 years old, before killing herself, according to investigators.
And in February, five members of a Douglas County family died in a shooting that investigators said was a murder-suicide.
— Please return to AJC.com for updates.