Authorities identify 8 young children shot and killed by a Louisiana father

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By Zoe Sottile, CNN

(CNN) — A 31-year-old man shot and killed his seven young children and a cousin and critically wounded his wife and another woman Sunday morning in northwestern Louisiana, authorities said, a shocking act of violence that marks the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in more than two years.

“This is a tragic situation, maybe the worst tragic situation we’ve ever had in Shreveport,” Mayor Tom Arceneaux said in a news conference.

The rampage was “domestic in nature,” Shreveport police Cpl. Chris Bordelon said.

Here’s what we know.

Early morning quiet broken by gunfire

Police responded to reports of shots fired in Shreveport’s Cedar Grove community, just after 6 a.m. local time Sunday, Bordelon said.

Shamar Elkins first shot his wife at a residence on Harrison Street, police said. He then went to another home on West 79th Street, where he shot the eight children and the second adult victim, who is the mother of the eighth child killed, according to police.

The youngest victim, Jayla Elkins, was just 3 years old, authorities said.

The other children killed are Shayla Elkins, 5; Kayla Pugh, 6; Layla Pugh, 7; Markaydon Pugh, 10; Sariahh Snow, 11; Khedarrion Snow, 6; and Braylon Snow, 5, according to the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office.

Elkins’ wife has “very serious injuries,” Bordelon told CNN affiliate KSLA. The other woman has “life-threatening injuries,” he added; her name has not yet been released.

As the shooting unfolded, some of the children tried to escape out the back door, state Rep. Tammy Phelps said during a news conference with other city officials.

A 13-year-old boy who jumped off the building’s roof has “some broken bones” but is expected to recover, according to Bordelon.

“We’re just very thankful he was able to get away,” Bordelon said.

The gunman fled toward a tire shop, a neighbor who asked not to be identified told CNN, citing video captured by her security camera.

Armed with a rifle, Elkins carjacked a vehicle and led police on a chase into Bossier Parish, Bordelon said. Police shot and killed the gunman, just across the Red River from Shreveport, the department said on Facebook.

“Officers were forced to discharge their department-issued firearms, neutralizing the suspect, who was pronounced deceased at the scene,” Shreveport police said.

Police are still working to determine “a complete motive and understanding as to why this happened, but it is domestic in nature,” Bordelon told KSLA.

Family says gunman had rocky marriage

Elkins married his wife, 34-year-old Shaneiqua Pugh, about two years ago, public records show.

Elkins and his wife were in the middle of separating and had been arguing prior to the shooting, Crystal Brown, a relative of one of the wounded women, told The Associated Press.

Elkins was stressed about his relationship with his wife, his mother and stepfather told The New York Times on Sunday. He had told them his wife wanted a divorce, and he was drowning in “dark thoughts,” the couple told the Times.

“I told him, ‘You can beat stuff, man. I don’t care what you’re going through, you can beat it,’” Elkins’ stepfather, Marcus Jackson, told the newspaper. “Then I remember him telling me: ‘Some people don’t come back from their demons.’”

CNN has reached out to family members, friends and neighbors who knew Elkins and Pugh.

Elkins posted a photo of himself with his children on his Facebook page on April 5, saying he had attended an Easter church service for the first time with all of his children.

Four days later, he reposted an inspirational prayer from another Facebook page that began, “Dear God, Today I ask You to help me guard my mind and my emotions.”

The prayer also asks for strength to “reject” depression, anger, anxiety and panic.

Elkins was in the Louisiana Army National Guard as a signal support system specialist and a fire support specialist, an Army spokesperson told CNN. He was never deployed and left the Army in 2020 as a private.

He had at least two prior criminal convictions in Caddo District Court, records show. He was arrested in March 2019 on a charge of illegal use of weapons and carrying a firearm on school property and driving while intoxicated in 2016.

In the 2019 incident, a police officer wrote in an arrest report that Elkins pulled a 9-millimeter handgun from his pants and shot at a vehicle five times after the driver of the car pulled a gun on him and “took off.” The shooting occurred near a schoolyard where children were playing, the officer wrote, according to the court documents.

Leader calls killing ‘the result when someone snaps’

City Councilmember Tabatha Taylor broke down in tears and asked people to make better use of resources to address mental health challenges.

“This is not a freaking joke! This is real, and this is the result when someone snaps,” said Taylor.

Investigators will determine whether this was a case of family annihilation — a deliberate attempt to wipe out one’s family all at once — former FBI Deputy Director and CNN senior law enforcement analyst Andrew McCabe said.

“I think the work to be done now is to go back and try to see those signs that were there for family members for likely his spouse, for friends, for others,” McCabe said, “and work with the community on better understanding what steps to take when someone around you is spiraling into that sort of a depression.”

The shooting is the deadliest in the US since January 2024, when a 23-year-old man shot eight people, most of them his relatives, in a Chicago suburb.

There have been at least 114 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter.

Shreveport’s mayor described the scene in the city of just over 180,000 people as “horrific,” and told CNN the shooting “rattles the entire city.”

“Our community is grieving the unimaginable loss of innocent children. There are no words that can make sense of it, and no distance that shields us from it,” Arceneaux said in a statement, urging the community to come together to support one another.

“We must not ignore the deeper issues – violence in the home, untreated trauma, and the silence that allows both to grow,” he wrote.

The eight children’s deaths more than double the number of homicides in Shreveport and Caddo Parish this year, according to the coroner’s office.

Multiple law agencies are investigating what led to the tragedy, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said.

“We do not yet know all the details, but I am deeply saddened by the senseless loss of life. I’m praying for the victims and their family members in the wake of this devastating violence,” Murrill wrote in a statement.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson, who represents the Shreveport area in Congress, called the killings “heartbreaking.”

“We’re holding the victims, their families and loved ones, and our Shreveport community close in our thoughts and prayers during this incredibly difficult time,” Johnson said.

At a vigil Sunday evening in Shreveport, community members gathered to light candles and lay flowers and stuffed animals as tributes to the children killed.

“It makes you take your children and hug them and hold them and tell them how much you love them because you just don’t know,” vigil attendee Kimberlin Jackson told the AP.

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CNN’s Chris Boyette, Alaa Elassar, Leah Asmelash, Amanda Jackson, Sharif Paget, Andy Rose and Sneha Dhandapani contributed to this report.