Washington // Thirteen people were killed in mass shootings in the US states of Ohio and Georgia on Friday, including eight members of one family.
Ohio authorities scrambled Saturday to establish who massacred eight members of a family in execution-style killings.
Seven bodies, each with a bullet to the head, were found on Friday at three houses in the village of Peebles, a rural community 130 kilometres east of Cincinnati, and an eighth later at a another site, police said.
Other than one 16-year-old, the victims were all adults. Several of them were apparently asleep in bed when they were killed.
“Each one of the victims appears to have been executed, each one of the victims appears to have been shot in the head,” Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine said.
The killers appeared to have spared a baby just four days old, who was found lying next to her dead mother, the authorities said. Another baby aged six months and a three-year-old child also survived.
The victims were all members of the Rhoden family, authorities said, declining to provide any more details.
“The preliminary determination has been made that none of the individuals committed suicide,” Mr DeWine said.
Officials gave no possible motive and said no arrests have been made.
A manhunt was under way for at least one suspected gunman, with authorities urging residents to lock their doors.
“There is a threat there and I believe that threat to be armed and dangerous,” Pike County sheriff Charles Reader said.
The first and fourth crime scenes are 50 kilometres apart, the sheriff’s office said.
Schools in Pike County and surrounding areas were placed on lockdown as a precautionary measure, local media reported.
Agents from the attorney general’s bureau of criminal investigation are leading the investigation.
Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich tweeted that the situation was “beyond comprehension”.
Meanwhile, a Georgia man shot dead three people and is suspected of killing two others in a spree involving his wife’s family before killing himself.
Wayne Anthony Hawes, 50, was found dead shortly after midnight on Friday at his home in Appling, about 210km east of Atlanta, police said.
He also tried unsuccessfully to set his home on fire.
Police said the victims were a 75-year-old man, an 85-year-old woman and a 31-year-old woman found at one home, and a 59-year-old woman and a 62-year-old man found at another shortly after.
Firearms kill around 30,000 people in the United States each year.
However, Republican legislators, many of whom are backed by the powerful National Rifle Association, have blocked president Barack Obama’s attempt to pass gun-control laws.
* Agence France-Presse and Reuters
