A Louisiana father shot and killed eight children, including seven of his own, in an attack on his family Sunday morning that spanned two homes in a Shreveport neighborhood shocked by one of the country’s deadliest mass shootings in recent years, police said. Two women, including the attacker’s wife — the children’s mother — were also seriously injured, according to Chris Bordelon, a spokesman for the Shreveport Police Department. Authorities said the children — all killed in the same house — were between 3 and 11 years old. The attacker, identified as Shamar Elkins, 31, died after a police chase that ended when officers opened fire on him, Bordelon said.
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Authorities did not specify what triggered the violence, although Bordelon stated that investigators were convinced the shooting was “entirely a domestic incident.” The attack is the deadliest mass shooting in the United States in more than two years. “I don’t know what to say, I’m completely overwhelmed,” said Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith. “I can’t begin to imagine how something like this could happen.” Bordelon indicated that police knew Elkins, who had been arrested in 2019 for a firearms-related case, but added that they had no record of other domestic violence incidents.
Police explained that the attacks began before dawn in a neighborhood south of downtown Shreveport, when the suspect shot a woman in one home and then moved to another residence “where this heinous act was perpetrated.”
Seven children were killed inside the second house, and another was found dead on the roof after apparently trying to flee, Bordelon said. Another child jumped from the roof and was expected to survive after being taken to a hospital. State Representative Tammy Phelps stated that some children tried to escape through the back door. “I can’t even imagine what the officers and first responders encountered when they arrived here today,” she said at a press conference.
The victims were three boys and five girls, according to the Caddo Parish coroner’s office. Shamar Elkins and his wife were in the process of separating and were due to appear in court on Monday, explained Crystal Brown, a cousin of one of the injured women. Brown indicated that the couple had been arguing about the separation before the shooting. “He murdered his children,” she said. “He shot his wife.” Elkins had four children with his wife and three others with another woman who lived nearby and was also injured, according to Brown. All the children were gathered in the same house. Brown described the children as “happy, very kind, and very sweet.”
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It is the shooting with the most victims in the U.S. in the last two years, according to authorities
A neighbor, Liza Demming, who lives two houses away from where most of the victims were shot, explained that her security camera captured images of the suspect fleeing, along with the sound of two gunshots. “That’s pretty much all I saw: him running out of the house and the cars leaving,” she recounted. She later went outside and saw the covered body of a child on the roof.
Pastor Marty T. Johnson Sr., of the nearby St. Gabriel Community Baptist Church, owner of one of the homes where the events occurred, indicated that a person who works for him had rented the house to the family, but that he had no direct relationship with them. “What began as a domestic dispute has ended in irreversible harm,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement.
Shreveport, a city in northwest Louisiana with about 180,000 inhabitants, was plunged into shock. It is the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since January 2024, when eight people were killed in a Chicago suburb, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press and USA Today in collaboration with Northeastern University. At a press conference in front of one of the homes, authorities were visibly shocked and asked the community for patience and prayers as they investigated several crime scenes. “It’s a tragic situation — perhaps the worst we’ve ever had,” said Mayor Tom Arceneaux. “It’s a terrible morning.”
Hours after the shooting, neighbors gathered in front of the single-story house on 79th Street and laid flowers. One of the doors had bloodstains. Later that night, at a nearby vigil, Kimberlin Jackson joined other community members to light candles in memory of the victims. “It makes you hug your children, hold them close, and tell them how much you love them,” she said.
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