Army vet kills himself live on Facebook after shooting girlfriend and killing her 5-year-old son
A man thought to have suffered from PTSD took the life of his girlfriend's son and attempted to kill her before killing himself in a live social media video
Authorities say an army veteran murdered his girlfriend’s son and severely wounded the woman before aiming a gun at his head and committing suicide in front of an audience live on Facebook, the New York Daily News reports.
On Friday, Jovonie McLendon Jr., 33, of Miamisburg, Ohio, reported himself to police after 11 a.m. saying that he killed Carter Clemons, 5, and his mother, Di’eshia Patterson, 27. The woman was rushed to Kettering Medical Center and was listed in critical condition.
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Police reported that a bizarre series of events unfolded around the incident. McLendon called the mother of his other child to report that he killed his girlfriend and her child around 11:34 a.m.
By 11:36, emergency responders were on the scene, Ohio Police Chief Ron Hess told reporters on Monday, according to the Dayton Daily News.
McLendon’s mother also called police at 11:37 to report that her son planned to kill himself and that he had committed double murders. By 11:39, a friend called authorities to report that McLendon planned to go live on Facebook, Hess said.
At least four more calls poured in between 11:43 and 11:50 saying that they had witnessed a suicide on Facebook Live. The video has since been taken down.
At 11:55 police found entered two adjacent apartments and found that McLendon was dead as well as the child. They also found the woman severely wounded and clinging to life.
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Jordan King, a friend of McLendon who served with in the military believes that he had PTSD and lost control.
“That’s my assumption,” he told Dayton station WHIO-TV. “I believe he lost control. He raged out and he did what he did…There was no coming back from that.”
“I was like ‘wow, this is not normal. This is not him – this is not normal.’ I know there was an underlying cause. A person on PTSD isn’t going to be triggered and act out. There has to be something he must have been going through … Once you get to a certain extent, you just act. You don’t think about the repercussions.”
Police are still investigating the circumstances that led to the murder-suicide.
“This will be a long, lengthy investigation,” Hess said. “We have no history at all in our database on him.”
