Authorities said that Michael Haight, 42, fatally shot himself in the head at the family’s Enoch City home after killing seven family members about two weeks after his wife requested a divorce.
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According to Enoch City Police Chief Jackson Ames, the police had “been involved in some investigations with the family a couple of years earlier.” Without going into greater detail, he retorted that we knew the family.
He asserted that the Police had not recently been called to the house. The type of weapon Mr. Haight had used in the killings was kept a secret by the authorities.
In the family’s Enoch City home, Michael Haight, 42, is accused of fatally shooting seven members of the family shortly after his wife filed for divorce. He then allegedly turned the pistol on himself.
Michael Haight: Who Was He?
A 42-year-old father from rural Utah killed his wife, his five children, and his mother-in-law inside their home this week before shooting and killing himself, according to officials on Thursday.
The other seven family members were allegedly murdered by Michael Haight before he committed himself inside the family’s Enoch City, some 250 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, home, according to the authorities.
On Wednesday, all eight bodies were discovered after Mr. Haight’s wife, Tausha Haight, 40, missed a scheduled appointment with someone who subsequently informed the Police.
At a news conference on Thursday, the mayor of Enoch City, Geoffrey Chesnut, announced that Ms. Haight had divorced Mr. Haight on December 21 and that her deceased mother, Gail Earl, 78, had been “giving assistance through the challenges that they were having.”
The names of the five children who passed away—a 17-year-old girl, a 12-year-old girl, a 7-year-old girl, a 7-year-old boy, and a 4-year-old boy—were not made public.
Mr. Chesnut spoke while sobbing as he recalled the shock and devastation of Enoch City, which has around 8,000 residents.
He asserted that his family and the Heights’ had shared a house as neighbors and that their little children had played in his yard with his children.
Enoch City is a close-knit community with a large number of children where homes hardly ever go on the market, according to the neighbors.
Children routinely play in the vicinity where the bodies were found by the police, and locals wave hello and offer to help one another shovel snow.
During the news conference, the city manager, Rob Dotson, also sobbed and said that the entire community was experiencing the same thing.
He replied, “We have no idea why this happened. Nobody is likely to ever understand what was going through these people’s minds.
However, we are aware that we cared for them and considered them to be our neighbors and friends.
According to a statement posted on the Iron County School District’s website on Wednesday, the five children were all students there in Cedar City, Utah.
An official from the district stated that the administration had sent out counselors and therapists to assist students in coping with the fatalities and that “quite a few” kids missed class on Thursday as a result of the community’s mourning.
Richard Jensen, a local politician, admitted in a Wednesday interview that he had shed a few tears after learning about the incident.
He stated he was able to compose himself enough to tell his 11-year-old son what had occurred so that he wouldn’t have to learn about it in school.
According to Mr. Jensen, who described the victim as a renowned religious and community Leader, this startled everyone.
Aaron Diamond, a resident of Enoch City, asserted that he knew the victims personally since they attended his church.
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