Ohio massacre: Mystery over teen killer's motive

A teenager about to graduate from high school shot dead his grandparents, mother and two friends, then wounded his younger sister before committing suicide.

The rampage in Bellefontaine, Ohio, has stunned school chiefs who said he seemed to have been in good spirits.

Logan County Sheriff Michael Henry said he did not know if authorities would ever find out why Scott Moody acted as he did, “but we’re going to try”.

The shootings at two neighbouring farmhouses were discovered on Sunday when the sole survivor, Moody’s critically-injured teenage sister, called her stepsister, who made an anguished call to police. The deaths came hours after a family party to celebrate graduation.

Preliminary evidence showed that Moody went to the farmhouse next door some time on Sunday morning and killed his grandparents with a .22-calibre rifle, then returned home, where he shot the others, then himself.

Bernie Pachmayer, superintendent for the school district, said no one had seen any indication Moody was troubled. He was looking forward to graduation and was in great spirits, she said.

“In our minds, it couldn’t possibly be Scott,” Pachmayer said.

She said he was a clean-cut boy who wanted to farm and fit well into the area when he came to the district two years ago.

“He was a farmer at heart,” she said. “He worked the land.”

Henry identified the victims as Moody’s grandparents Sharyl Shafer, 66, and Gary Shafer, 67; Moody’s mother, Sheri Shafer, 37; and two friends, Megan Karus, 19, and Paige Harshbarger, 14. Karus and Harshbarger had slept over after the party.

The bodies of Moody’s mother and the two friends were discovered in the other home along with the wounded survivor, Stacy Moody, and the body of Moody himself. Authorities said Karus was on the couch. The other victims were in upstairs bedrooms.

Stacy Moody, 15, was shot in the neck. She remains in a critical condition at Ohio State University Medical Centre.

There was no sign of a struggle at either house, Henry said, adding that it appeared Karus, Harshbarger and Sheri Shafer were killed while they slept.

The houses are about a quarter of a mile apart along a two-lane state route a mile west of Bellefontaine, 45 miles north west of Columbus. Fields where corn and soya beans are grown and surround the white-panelled, two-storey homes.

Moody and Karus were to have graduated on Sunday afternoon from Riverside High School in nearby De Graff. School officials, who had only minutes of notice about the deaths before the ceremony began, held graduation as scheduled and announced the shootings afterwards.

Last week, Moody’s family had taken out two congratulatory ads featuring Moody’s picture in the Bellefontaine Examiner. The ad from his mother and sister read: “Good luck and have fun!”