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Louisiana authorities have identified eight children – aged three to 11 – who were killed on Sunday during what police described as a “violent domestic incident” in Shreveport that marked the deadliest US mass shooting in more than two years.
The Caddo parish coroner’s office identified the children as Jayla Elkins, three; Shayla Elkins, five; Kayla Pugh, six; Layla Pugh, six; Markaydon Pugh, 10; Sariahh Snow, 11; Khedarrion Snow, 6; and Braylon Snow, five.
The gunman, identified as 31-year-old Shamar Elkins, fatally shot the children – including seven of his own – at two separate Shreveport houses. Police shot him to death after chasing him after he stole a car, according to investigators.
A total of 11 people were shot during Sunday’s violence, a police spokesperson, Christopher Bordelon, said in a news conference.
The two women who were injured included Shaneiqua Pugh, the gunman’s wife and mother of four of his children. The other wounded woman reportedly was the mother of Elkins’s three other children.
Both injured women were listed in critical condition.
Bordelon told the Associated Press on Sunday evening that Elkins shot the mother first and then killed eight children. Elkins and Pugh had reportedly been arguing about their separation, over which they were due in court on Monday.
Bordelon said there was still much to investigate – but detectives were confident the shooting was “entirely a domestic” case.
The Louisiana state police by Monday had taken over the officers’ killing of Shamar Elkins, saying, “One subject was shot and has been pronounced dead. No officers were harmed during the incident.”
Police have said Elkins had been arrested in 2019 in a firearms case – but they were unaware of any prior domestic violence issues.
Wayne Smith, the Shreveport police chief, said he was “taken aback” by the deadly shooting, adding that members of his agency were out in the community processing the scene. Smith said officers would work diligently for “however long it takes” to find out what happened.
“My heart is just taken aback,” Smith said at a press conference about the mass killing in his city. “I just cannot begin to imagine how such an event can occur.”
Tom Arceneaux, the Shreveport mayor, meanwhile described the killings as “maybe the worst tragic situation we’ve … had” in recent memory.
Sunday’s killings in Shreveport represent the deadliest US mass shooting since January 2024, when an attacker shot and killed eight people in a suburb of Chicago, according to a USA Today and Associated Press database.
Elkins, the gunman, is reported to have been struggling with mental health problems – but police have not offered a motive. The US army said that Elkins served in the Louisiana army national guard from 2013 to 2020 as a signal support system specialist and a fire support specialist. He later worked for the UPS delivery service.
Relatives of the gunman have described Elkins as stressed about his relationship with his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh. The New York Times reported that he called his mother and stepfather on 5 April – Easter Sunday – and told them through tears that he wanted to take his own life.
He purportedly told his stepfather Marcus Jackson his wife wanted a divorce – and that he was having “dark thoughts”.
“I told him, ‘You can beat stuff, man. I don’t care what you’re going through, you can beat it,’” Jackson said. “Then I remember him telling me: ‘Some people don’t come back from their demons.’”
His mother, Mahelia Elkins, told the outlet that she did not know what problems her son was having with his wife.
Mahelia Elkins disclosed that she had her son when she was a teenager and addicted to crack cocaine – and he had been raised by Betty Walker, a family friend.
Walker, who did not witness the shootings, told the Times that Elkins shot his wife several times, including in the head and in the stomach.
Both said they had recently felt uneasy about their son. But he had shared a prayer on Facebook – “Dear God, today I ask you to help me guard my mind and my emotions” – and sent them a photo of his family.
His mother told the Times that she had texted him the previous week to ask how they were. He responded: “Everyone is doing OK.” But when she texted on Thursday to send her love to her grandchildren, she received no response back.
Jackson said the first indication he received that something bad had happened was on Sunday when strangers posted on his Facebook that Elkins was “the devil”.
Elkins’s prior brushes with the law included an arrest for allegedly driving while inebriated in 2016 – and in 2019, he allegedly pulled a handgun out of his waistband and shot at a vehicle five times after the driver of the car had pulled a gun on him.
Court records show Elkins pleaded guilty in October 2019 to illegal use of weapons or dangerous instrumentalities.
Willie Vasher, a colleague of Elkins’s at UPS, told the Times that Elkins presented as if he were a devoted father – but he often appeared stressed and would pull his hair out, causing a bald spot.
Separately, in a conversation with the Washington Post, Elkins’s brother-in-law, Troy Brown, who lived with him, said Elkins acted normally the last time they saw each other on Saturday. But Brown told the Post that Elkins had been distraught in a recent conversation about his wife recently seeking a divorce.
“After the first argument about the divorce, he acted like he was losing his mind,” Brown said to the Post after reportedly leaving a Shreveport hospital where he had visited Elkins’s wife. “He was upset about it. I would talk to him and he would tell me, ‘Bro, I don’t want to lose my wife.’”
Aspects of Sunday’s mass killing in Shreveport fit the definition of a type of crime known since the 1980s as a family annihilation.
Most of those cases involve a male killer armed with a gun who ultimately kills himself or is killed after killing multiple close family members. American communities have historically tended to view family annihilations as isolated tragedies. But a July 2023 Indianapolis Star investigation found they had been occurring across the US every five days on average at the time.
Sunday’s bloodshed in Shreveport was the seventh mass killing in the US so far in 2026, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive – a non-partisan reference resource – defines mass killings as cases in which four or more victims are killed.
Furthermore, as of Monday, there had been at least 114 mass shootings reported across the US so far for the year, according to the archive.
The archive defines mass shootings as cases in which four or more victims are shot or killed.
Meanwhile, Louisiana generally ranks lowly among US states with respect to mental health care access. A 2024 report from the state’s department of health highlighted intimate partner violence as a “significant public health concern in the state”.
And the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s website notes that “leaving is often the most dangerous period of time” in terms of the potential for intimate partner violence.
Perennially high rates of mass shootings in the US have prompted calls from many in the country for more substantial gun control. But Congress over the years has been unable or unwilling to heed such calls, with lawmakers who support keeping firearms as accessible as possible often responding to deadly mass shootings with offered prayers rather than with legislative action.
Gabrielle Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who survived a 2011 assassination attempt and is a gun violence prevention advocate, said in a statement on Sunday: “All of us should be outraged that we live in a country that routinely subjects our kids to such unimaginable violence.
“Our leaders must act – now.”
