Relative 'devastated' after shooting kills 8 in Mississippi
(AP) — Head in hands, his voice strained, Vincent Mitchell sat outside his little yellow home and tried to make sense of how a family dispute led to a rampage that killed eight people, including the deputy who tried to keep them safe.
Godbolt showed up at Mitchell's home in the southern Mississippi town of Bogue Chitto shortly before midnight Saturday to demand that his estranged wife give up their two children.
[...] slain was Deputy William Durr, a two-year sheriff's department veteran and former police officer in nearby Brookhaven, where authorities said Godbolt fled and killed four more people at two other homes.
Mississippi Bureau of Investigation spokesman Warren Strain said prosecutors plan to charge Godbolt, 35, with murder, but it's too soon to say what the motive was.
Godbolt himself shed some light on what happened, in an interview he gave to The Clarion-Ledger (http://on.thec-l.com/2rbQIq5 ) as he sat with his hands cuffed behind his back on the side of a road in Brookhaven, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Jackson.
"Everybody that got killed was related to him, except the deputy," said Johnny Hall Sr., a longtime member of the New Zion Union M.B. Church in Bogue Chitto, not far from the initial crime scene, where he said Godbolt also was a member.
At least seven hours elapsed between the first shootings and Godbolt's arrest near the final crime scene, in a subdivision of ranch houses.