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Georgia Murder Suicide: Man Kills Wife, Two Children, Then Himself

By Lindsay McCane
Published on: 00:58 PST, Jul 23, 2015

A Georgia murder suicide has left four people dead, including two children, both under the age of 10.

On Tuesday, July 21, sheriff’s deputies responded to a domestic violence call in a suburban neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. However, when they arrived, there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary taking place.

Deborah Monley, operations manager for Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said the officers are trained to ask certain questions “that would trigger a reaction if there was a problem.”

Sadly, the next morning, a man, identified as 32-year-old Matthew Fields, shot and killed four people, including himself, the Associated Press reports.

According to the news site, Matthew Fields had been having issues with his wife, 37-year-old Rebecca Manning, prior to shooting her, and their two children, 8-year-old Jared and 9-year-old Jacob Smith. He also critically wounded Manning’s father, Jerry Manning, after firing a shot at him, as well. Forsyth County Sheriff Duane Piper said all five people lived in the same home, according to Fox News.

Maj. Rick Doyle of the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office said there were no signs of an argument or fight at the home on Tuesday, leaving their hands tied on what they could do. Fields was not home at the time of the alleged dispute, and the family wouldn’t cooperate with the police, saying there was nothing more they could do.

If there are no signs of violence and “everyone there says nothing is going on, you just can’t pick somebody and say, ‘You look like the instigator,’ and arrest the person,” Frank Rotondo, executive director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, said.

According to the 911 dispatcher documents, released by the sheriff’s office, Fields had contacted his mother after shooting his family, telling her that he planned on taking his own life. A man with Field’s mother was the one who called 911, alerting them to the shooting at approximately 911 about 6 a.m. Wednesday, July 22. He explained that they were on their way to the home, and were approximately 30 minutes away. He also noted that Field’s mother was “the only one that can talk to him.”

The children were apparently shot in their beds, but it is not clear where the other people were shot in the home. The children, and their father, were dead when the police arrived. Rebecca and her father were taken to a nearby hospital, but she died en route. As of now, there is no known motive for the murders.

“We’d like to find a motive, Piper said. “There’s no reason that any of us are ever going to understand to wipe an entire family. We have absolutely no clue at this point what precipitated it.”

[Photo via Shutterstock]

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