Shreveport Police now identify the gunman involved in the shooting death of all 8 children early Sunday morning in Shreveport as 31-year-old Shamar Elkins of Shreveport. Police say he was the father of 7 of the 8 children. Two women were also wounded, one critically in what authorities are calling a case of domestic violence.
Reports of the first shots came in shortly after 6:00 a.m., at a home near the intersection of Harrison Street and Linwood Avenue in the city’s Cedar Grove neighborhood. Police say Elkins shot a woman at that location.
The next shots rang out right across the street from Linwood Avenue, in the 300 block of West 79th Street. Shreveport Police Spokesman Christopher Bordelon confirms that’s where all 8 children were killed with an assault-style weapon. Seven of the children were killed inside the house, while the eighth child was shot on the roof while trying to escape.
Bordelon says after shooting the children, Elkins carjacked a vehicle near the intersection of West 79th Street and Linwood Avenue, which led to a chase with Shreveport Police into Bossier City and ultimately to a shooting in which Elkins was shot and killed by Shreveport Police. Louisiana State Police are handling that aspect of the case, according to authorities.
Elkins’ wife is recovering from her injuries. Her aunt, Sallie Small, says her niece had become increasingly worried about her husband and had finally made a decision to leave. “She was scared. She had started being afraid of him because he was having to [sic] start fighting her. She says, ‘I fixing to leave Aunt Sallie.’ I said, ‘Okay. What’s going on?’ She said he’s too abusive, and he said she wasn’t going nowhere. He said, ‘you ain’t going nowhere.' And she left anyway with her baby. He killed the baby. I don’t understand why he killed a one-year-old baby. His own child.”
