2020 Williamsburg massacre
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Williamsburg, West Virginia, United States
| 2020 Williamsburg massacre | |
|---|---|
   The location of the shooting | |
| Location | 37°59′33″N 80°30′33″W / 37.99253°N 80.50927°W Williamsburg, West Virginia, United States |
| Date | December 8, 2020 |
Attack type | pedicide |
| Weapons | .410 gauge single-shot shotgun[1] |
| Deaths | 6 (including the perpetrator) |
| Injured | 0 |
| Perpetrator | Oreanna Myers |
On December 8, 2020, in Williamsburg, West Virginia, United States, 25-year-old Oreanna Myers shot and killed five children, aged between one and seven, with a shotgun before setting her house on fire and committing suicide. Myers was the biological mother of three of the children, and the stepmother of the other two. It is the worst mass shooting in West Virginia history.
At around 2:30 p.m. (EST) on December 8, 2020, in Williamsburg, West Virginia, 25-year-old Oreanna Myers was seen picking up two of her children from a bus stop. Myers was the biological mother of three of the children, and the stepmother of the other two.[2] She shot all five of her children with a .410 single-shot shotgun before setting their two-story house on fire in an act of arson. Myers then left the building and fatally shot herself outside, where her body was found alongside the shotgun near a picnic table.[3][4] She had shot herself in the head, and there was a "red line drawn across her face and the bridge of her nose, underneath her eyes, that went from ear to ear", and it took until December 12 to find and identify all the victims' bodies.[5]
911 was alerted of the property on fire at 3:30 p.m., and fire crews arrived at 3:50 p.m. to find the home badly damaged. Myers' body was found just before 4:30 p.m. along the home's south side.[2] Myers' husband, Brian Bumgarner, had been away from the home at various times across a 10-day period before the incident. This was due to a recent car accident which made him decide to stay with other family members so he could get rides to work.[3]
Three handwritten suicide notes were found in their car, one of which was a confession to the murder of all five children and her suicide. The notes stated that "This is no one’s fault but my own" and included apologies to her husband and discussion of her struggles with mental health.[2][6]