A gunman killed a female McDonald’s worker and two relatives before taking his own life in a rural Georgia town.
The shooter, who has not been named, killed his 50-year-old mother and 74-year-old grandmother at two neighbouring homes in the small town of Moultrie, south of Atlanta, Colquitt County Coroner C Verlyn Brock told The Associated Press.
The 26-year-old gunman also killed a 41-year-old McDonald’s manager then killed himself, according to the coroner.
Thursday’s shooting was not the first time police had encountered the gunman, the Associated Press reports.
Jerry Goodwin, who lived next door to the alleged shooter, said police previously were sent to the man’s home a day earlier when he came outside, shouted something, and fired a gun.
“I had never seen him hurt anybody or try to hurt anybody before this,” Mr Goodwin said.
Moultrie police and Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents are reportedly probing the fatal incidents at the fast food restaurant in the town of 15,000 residents as well as at a crime scene on Sixth Street Southwest.
The coroner has not released the identities of the victims or said if the gunman and the McDonald’s worker knew each other. He says that the gunman and mother lived at the same address, while the grandmother lived at a house next door.
Law enforcement officials told WALB News 10 that they have not yet confirmed a connection between the two incidents.
Moultrie Police Department Chief of Police Sean Ladson told The Moultrie Observer that there was not an immediate threat to the public.
The Moultrie Police Department has asked for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations to conduct an investigation, reported The Moultrie Observer.
“We are investigating multiple incidents and there are fatalities involved,” Jamy Steinberg, GBI special agent in charge for Region 9, told the newspaper.
Sabrina Holweger, who works at a next-door optometrist’s office, said she arrived at work at 8am to find police at the McDonald’s where a woman’s body was in the doorway of the restaurant.
She told The Associated Press that the victim was the early morning manager of the restaurant and that the shooter had been an employee there.
And she said that it appeared the gunman had shot the manager when she unlocked the door to let him in to work a shift.
The incident comes just one day after a Coast Guard veteran opened fire inside a medical building in Atlanta, killing one woman and seriously injuring four more victims.
Deion Patterson was arrested hiding at a pool in a condo complex in Cobb County, Georgia, more than eight hours after he allegedly attacked his victims in a waiting room while at a medical appointment.
