HAMPTON, Ga. — Four victims of a mass shooting in an Atlanta suburb were remembered as loving relatives, an expert locksmith and a beautiful singer as people in Hampton gathered Monday to hold a prayer vigil in their honor.
Neighbors were still shaking off disbelief at the 10-minute span Saturday when Scott Leavitt, 67; his wife, Shirley Leavitt, 66; Steve Blizzard, 65; and Ronald Jeffers, 66, were shot and killed. Police and witnesses named 40-year-old Andre Longmore as the shooter.
The killings set off a massive search that ended Sunday with Longmore dead in a shootout in another suburb about 15 miles north. The exchange of gunfire wounded a sheriff’s deputy and two police officers, who are all recovering.
Residents of the bucolic Dogwood Lakes subdivision, where about 40 houses with tidy yards flank a lake on two streets, were surprised that gun violence had come to their peaceful neighborhood about 25 miles south of Atlanta. Hampton had not previously recorded a homicide since 2018.
“I’m not going to say it makes me uneasy, but it does drive home that this kind of thing could happen anywhere,” said Kevin Pugh, who lives next door to the house where the Leavitts lived for a few years with their adult daughter and her young children. “Up until Saturday, the most ruckus we had was the Canadian geese.”
The shootings brought to 31 the number of mass killings so far this year, with at least 153 people dying in them, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in a partnership with Northeastern University.
Longmore had needed mental help for nearly a decade, but his family and officials couldn’t force him to get treatment, his mother said. Longmore had a “mental breakdown” in 2014, leading to an inpatient hospital stay, Lorna Dennis told WSB-TV on Sunday.
She said her son “kept deteriorating” but refused to seek medical attention, and that officials said they couldn’t force him to seek care.
“It’s hard to lose your son, and it’s also hard to know your son cost the life of so many people,” Dennis said.
She said Longmore was living with her in recent years and she hopes relatives of the victims will find peace with God.
