HERMITAGE, Tenn. – Two young siblings were visiting their grandparents’ Tennessee home when things went unimaginably wrong Saturday.
Police say Terry Majors, 64, shot and killed his wife Leigh Shea-Majors, 61, and his 6-year-old grandson, Ty Dodson, before fatally shooting himself.
Ty’s 4-year-old sister ran to a neighbor’s house for help and escaped unharmed, NBC News reports. She is now back home in Kentucky, where Ty had just started kindergarten little more than a month ago, with her mother, her mother’s partner, and three older sisters.
Of Majors, Ty’s aunt tells the Tennessean, “He’s always been as good as he could be. We never dreamed this could happen. It’s just pure evil.” Adds a neighbor of the Majors to WKRN, “I know that they loved their grandkids very very much. … I’m just as dumbfounded as everybody else is.”
Majors had no significant criminal history in the county, and police were still investigating a possible motive.
Ty’s uncle, Chase Dodson, says the little boy visited the Majors often—it’s unclear whether Terry Majors is the boy’s grandfather, as he’s often referred to in news articles on the case, or simply his grandmother’s husband, as he is sometimes referred to, but in a Facebook fundraiser he set up for Ty’s family, Chase Dodson writes, “My nephew Ty Dodson was visiting his grandparents on his moms side this past Saturday night in Tennessee. This visit went extremely wrong and the step-grandad murderd his wife, My nephew, and then cowardly turned the gun on himself.”
Chase Dodson notes this is the latest in a series of tragedies for the family; Ty’s biological father died just 15 days before Ty was born. (Read more Tennessee stories.)
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