“I just don’t know what to say, my heart is just taken aback,” Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith said. “I cannot begin to imagine how such an event could occur.”

Elkins’ relatives said that he had mental health problems and was stressed about his relationship with his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh.

His mother, Mahelia Elkins, and stepfather, Marcus Jackson, in an interview, said that when Elkins called them on Easter Sunday, he sounded distressed and told them that his wife wanted a divorce. He also said that he was drowning in “dark thoughts.”

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

Police said there were multiple crime scenes, including two homes on the same block on West 79th Street and a third residence in the neighbourhood on Harrison Street.

State Rep. Tammy Phelps said some children tried to get away through the back door. “I can’t even imagine what the police officers, first responders actually dealt with when they got here today,” she said at a news conference.

The incident is the deadliest mass shooting in the US since January 2024, when eight victims were killed in Joliet, Illinois, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a nonprofit that tracks US gun violence.-Agencies