Bellefontaine, Ohio – A teen about to graduate from high school shot to death his grandparents, mother and two friends, then wounded his younger sister before committing suicide, authorities said Monday.
The rampage perplexed school officials, who said Scott Moody seemed to have been in good spirits.
The shootings at two neighboring farmhouses were discovered when the sole survivor, Moody’s critically wounded teenage sister, called her stepsister, who made an anguished call to 911. The deaths came hours after a family party to celebrate graduation.
Preliminary evidence showed that Moody went to the farmhouse next door sometime Sunday morning and killed his grandparents with a .22-caliber rifle, then returned home, where he shot the others, then himself.
The sheriff 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 remained in critical condition Monday.
There was no sign of a struggle at either house, the sheriff said, adding that it appeared Karus, Harshbarger and Sheri Shafer were killed while they slept.
The houses are about a quarter-mile apart along a two- lane state route a mile west of the city of 13,000 people, 45 miles northwest of Columbus. Fields where corn and soybeans are grown surround the white, two-story homes.
Authorities were alerted to the slayings after Stacy Moody called her stepsister, Nicole Vagedes, telling her that she and her mother had been beaten up and that she could not wake up her mother.
Vagedes went to the house and called 911.
“I can’t wake her,” she said of the mother, Sheri Shafer. “I can’t get a pulse.” Her voice became more frantic as she told emergency dispatchers about finding more bodies. “Oh, my God, there’s one in the living room. There’s another one on the couch,” Vagedes told deputies in the anguished call that was released Monday.
Moody and Karus were to have graduated Sunday 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 afterward.
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!”
