On January 4, a man in Utah began the new year by shooting his entire family and then shooting himself dead about a week after his wife filed for divorce.
With no apparent warning, Michael Haight, 42, gunned down his wife, their five children, and his mother-in-law. Law enforcement found gunshot wounds on each of the victims.
Residents of the small, community-centered town of Enoch, Utah were shocked by the brutal crime. The town is made up mostly of large families belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon Church.
The family was said to be well known in the area and many residents said they had attended church with them, and their children went to school with the school-age victims.
Citing a possible motive, it was revealed that Haight’s wife, Tausha Haight, 40, filed for divorce on December 21, and her husband was served with the divorce papers six days later, on December 27.
According to a report by the Associated Press, Tausha Haight’s sister-in-law, Jennie Earl, said that Tausha had recently told her family that her husband Michael had taken the guns out of the family home. Did he have a plan?
On Wednesday, January 4, someone called the police and told them that they were worried because Mrs. Haight had missed an appointment. Officers went to the family home to do a check on Wednesday afternoon.
Police found all the victims and the gunman dead inside the home. The dead included the children – three girls and two boys between the ages of four and 17, Mrs. Haight, and her mother, 78-year-old Gail Earl.
Mrs. Haight’s divorce lawyer, James Park, said he was shocked and that his client had not expressed any fear that her husband would hurt her. He said he only met her twice, and that the most recent meeting was on the previous Tuesday.
Haight and his wife were married for 20 years before the murder-suicide.
Though shocking to hear, family mass killings happen much too often across the United States. They’ve occurred nearly every 3.5 weeks for the last two decades on average, according to a database compiled by USA Today, The Associated Press, and Northeastern University.