A grandfather shot and killed his daughter and six grandchildren at his Florida home on Thursday before turning his gun on himself, law enforcement officials in Florida said.

The children’s ages ranged from three months to 10 years, Gilchrist County sheriff Robert Schultz said at a press conference in Bell, a small town in central Florida about 30 miles west of Gainesville.

Schultz named the killer as Don C Spirit, 51, a town resident who called 911 at about 4pm making threats against his family and himself. He was alive when the first sheriff’s deputy arrived at the house, Schultz said, but killed himself soon after.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that in 2001 a man named Don C Spirit accidentally shot and killed his eight-year-old son Kyle with a high powered rifle in a hunting accident. Florida Department of Corrections records show he was released from jail in 2006 after serving three years for firearms offences relating to that incident.

At the press conference on Thursday, Schultz said there was an interaction between Spirit and the deputy, but that it was believed the seven victims were already dead by the time the officer arrived.



The deputy then searched the building and found “multiple victims with apparent gunshot wounds”, he added.

“When he called 911, he said enough to alarm us to get someone there, and we needed to get there in a hurry.

“We’re asking for prayers for this community and the families involved. This is a small county. We’re all family here. We will continue to be family and we will work through this.”

Family members confirmed that the woman killed in the mass shooting was Sarah Spirit, 28, who they said was Don Spirit’s daughter and mother to all six of the children. Schultz did not identify the child victims and said that some of them lived at the house with their grandfather.

He added that no motive for the murder-suicide was immediately apparent but that deputies had responded to incidents at the house in the past.

Spirit was sentenced to three years in jail in January 2003 over the death of his son. According to press reports at the time, Spirit killed Kyle, whom he nicknamed AppleJax, in November 2001 during a hunting trip to the Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area near Kenansville, Florida.

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said Spirit was walking with Kyle and another son, Josh, then 13, when he stopped to point out some rust on the barrel of the Browning rifle he was carrying. The rifle fired and a bullet struck Kyle in the head.

Prosecutors accepted the boy’s death was an accident but charged Spirit with illegal possession of a weapon. As a felon, for a 1998 conviction for possession of marijuana, Spirit was not allowed to own a gun.

“It’s a tragedy all the way round,” state attorney Mike Saunders told the Orlando Sentinel at the time. “But if he had followed the law and not possessed a firearm, the child would not be dead.”

According to Schultz, another of Spirit’s daughters, whom he did not name, is still alive.

“There are certain things in life you can explain. And there are certain things you cannot explain. This is something I cannot explain,” Schultz told the Gainesville Sun.

He added that deputies would release more information when it was available.