SAUCIER -- Shock settled over the Flushing Meadows subdivision this morning as residents in the western tip of Harrison County learned a neighbor had fatally shot his teenage stepdaughters and one of their friends before turning a gun on himself.
Debbie Rosner of Andre Drive said her husband had planned to offer to help neighbor Walter Ferri finish building a front porch at Ferri's mobile home across the road. She said the sound-proofing in her own home prevented her from hearing the seven or more shots that sheriff's officials said Ferri fired over the course of an hour and 18 minutes this morning. The final shot at 4:40 a.m. claimed the 50-year-old Ferri's life as a deputy sheriff tried to coax Ferri out of the house through a bedroom window.
Rosner recalled hearing her dog's barking earlier but didn't know a tragedy had unfolded until a deputy knocked on her door.
"It's a shame, shame, shame," said Rosner, describing the neighborhood in the wooded area as usually quiet and peaceful.
"The girl that rode the school bus, she was beautiful," Rosner said, referring to 17-year-old Sherry Lee. She was a senior at Harrison Central High School.
Coroner Gary Hargrove identified the other victims as Sherry's 19-year-old sister, Stacy Lee, and Stacy's fiance, 19-year-old James Glass of Long Beach. The girls' mother, the former Zonia Chapman, was assaulted and escaped and was later comforted at a neighbor's home while funeral home personnel in white, disposable hazardous-material uniforms rolled the bodies out of the mobile home on gurneys.
Sheriff Melvin Brisolara said the girls' mother had crawled out a back window and hid under the porch before running across the street for help.
Dispatchers for 911 received two phone calls, the sheriff said. One call, at 3:22 a.m., is believed to have been made by one of the teenage girls whose bodies were later found in a bathroom.
"You could tell they were trying to hide," Brisolara said.
The second call, also from a female, at 3:37 a.m. advised someone had been shot. First-responders were already on the scene and Sheriff's Sgt. John Massengill saw Ferri through a bedroom window and tried to talk him out, officials said.
"This is the worst, saddest scene I can remember," Brisolara said.
Sheriff's Maj. Randy Cook and Capt. Ron Pullen, with more than 50 years of law enforcement experience between them, said they can't remember a homicide in the county with as many deaths.
Investigators who questioned Zonia Ferri said the woman told them the shooting started after Walter Ferri began "accusing her of different types of things," said Brisolara.
The Sun Herald updates this story in Wednesday's editions.
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