A 10-year-old boy got up in the morning to find his three brothers and mother and father dead inside their home.
The boy ‘woke up and discovered what had happened’ on Monday morning, stated Oklahoma City Police Department Sgt Gary Knight.
His father, Jonathan Candy, 42, is believed to have shot dead his wife Lindsay Candy, 39; and three of their sons, Lucas Candy, 12; Ethan Candy, 14; and Dylan Candy, 18. He then turned the gun on himself, police said.
The youngest boy was spared – and cops do not have an explanation as to why.
‘He called 911 and said he had just woke up and found the bodies,’ said Knight.
The parents are believed to have gotten into an argument either late Sunday or early Monday.
‘At some point (Jonathan Candy) armed himself with a gun, he shot her multiple times, killing her,’ Knight said of the wife. ‘At that point he systematically went through the home shooting and killing the children.’
Cops arrived to the scene of a ‘carnage’, Knight said.
‘Make no mistake about it, what happened in that residence was nothing short of a massacre.’
The motive of the shooting on the 2800 block of Mirage Street in Oklahoma City remains unknown.
Cops said they do not doubt the boy saying that he slept through the shooting. He called cops shortly after 9.30am.
‘The door (to his room) was closed and there was a box fan running,’ Knight said. ‘There is no indication he didn’t sleep through it.’
He was not injured and is under the care and custody of relatives.
The family had no previous contact with law enforcement or history of domestic violence, and there had been no police calls to their home, according to Knight.
‘It remains a mystery as to what caused Mr Candy to murder his wife and three of his children,’ stated a police report.
Anyone with information on the crime is urged to contact the police department’s homicide tip line.
It happened 10 months after a Louisiana pastor allegedly fatally shot his wife and then himself in front of their children at a hotel. And in November, a mother-of-three was shot dead by her estranged husband on her driveway while her children were inside her home in Houston, Texas.
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