HAMPTON, GEORGIA (AP) – A few hundred people gathered on Monday for a vigil to remember four victims of a mass shooting in an Atlanta suburb, singing This Little Light of Mine at the end as they lit candles in their honour.
Family members, friends and neighbours were still shaking off disbelief at the 10-minute span on Saturday when Scott Leavitt, 67; his wife, Shirley Leavitt, 66; Steve Blizzard, 65; and Ronald Jeffers, 66, were shot and killed. Police and witnesses named 40-year-old Andre Longmore as the shooter.
“My parents loved each other,” Scott Leavitt Jr said after the vigil, a tear running down his cheek.
“They always said neither one of them would be able to live without the other, so we’ve been able to find some comfort that they went together.” The two had planned a trip along Route 66 in early July, but when Harold had to cancel to allow an amputated finger to heal, Steve told him they’d do it another time.
Harold Blizzard said his older brother, Steve, was a lover of photography and adventure.
“It’s the biggest regret of my life,” Harold Blizzard said after the vigil.
The killings set off a massive search that ended on Sunday with Longmore dead in a shootout in another suburb about 25 kilometres north.
The exchange of gunfire wounded a sheriff’s deputy and two police officers, who are all recovering.
Residents of the bucolic Dogwood Lakes subdivision, where about 40 houses with tidy yards flank a lake on two streets, were surprised that gun violence had come to their peaceful neighbourhood about 40km south of Atlanta.
Hampton had not previously recorded a homicide since 2018.
