Authorities have said five people, including two children and a baby, were killed in a murder-suicide, but they haven’t identified the shooter. The bodies were found Friday in Emington, a small farming community about 80 miles southwest of Chicago.
Neighbor Annelise Fiedler told The Associated Press that she heard a round of shots Friday afternoon and ran outside to her backyard.
She saw 30-year-old Sara McMeen in the next yard over hovering over her baby as if she’d dropped her. Fiedler asked McMeen if everything was alright, and “she looked at me and said, ‘No, everything is not alright.”
McMeen fired a shot at the infant, “and then I just ran,” said Fiedler, a town trustee. Fiedler said she didn’t see or hear what happened after that, and she didn’t see any of the other victims.
Along with McMeen, Livingston County coroner Michael Burke identified them as 29-year-old Daniel Warren, 8-year-old Skyler Lemke, 7-year-old Ian Lemke and 10-month-old Maggie Warren.
Town officials said the baby and another child were found with the woman in the backyard of the home in the 100 block of South Street. A boy and the man were found elsewhere.
Squad cars from at least three jurisdictions lined the short, curbless street of the crime scene with sheriff's deputies blocking the street Friday night.
A woman who answered the cellphone of a man believed to be the surviving father of two of the slain children said: "We're all in shock — my son called me to go check on my grandkids. I'm sorry, I can't talk anymore."
"They're all gone, all gone," said Debbie Delaney, Emington's secretary and treasurer. Her husband is mayor of Emington and her son is one of the firefighters called to the scene, she said.
Neighbors said the family had moved into the small home near the town's park late in the summer and had kept to themselves.
"They didn't seem to want to neighbor," said Darlene Lithgow. "The kids were nice. They would come by and talk to me."
"We've never experienced anything like this," said Bob Young, a retired school administrator and Livingston County board member who lives in town. "(The feeling) is one of shock I guess, wondering what could we have done."
The town has a grain elevator, a church, a post office that may soon be closed, a park and a dog-grooming business. For the older men, there's a coffee klatch that meets at the grain elevator; for youth there's the Emington Hot Shots 4-H club. Young said the slain kids were not in the club.
Over the last 20 years, Young said, the town has gone from being a "real stable" community to one whose low cost of living attracts a more transient population from the northern part of the state. But he said the worst calls county police typically handle there are domestic disputes and teenage pranks.
Young said he had seen the slain children playing on the park's swings and slides.
"They seemed happy and well provided for," he said.
The two older children who were killed were students in the first and third grades at the elementary school in Saunemin, a town south of Emington, Young said.
The school superintendent told him they were now on Christmas break but would be making counselors available, Young said.
Some unsettled residents came during the day to the United Church of Christ, where Young is moderator. He didn't lock it up until after 7 p.m.
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