Teacher fatally shot, 14-year-old daughter arrested after fleeing Mississippi home
A Mississippi teen is in custody after allegedly fatally shooting her mother and injuring her stepfather, authorities say.
A 14-year-old was arrested for murder and attempted murder on Tuesday after deputies responded to reports of a shooting around 5:00 p.m., Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey said in a news release provided to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Bailey said the mother, a math teacher at Northwest Rankin High School, was found dead in her Brandon, Mississippi home on Tuesday afternoon.
Deputies who arrived at the scene found teen's stepfather, who owns the home, with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. He told police that when he came home he found his stepdaughter armed with a pistol and her mother dead with an apparent gunshot wound.
He also told deputies that he got into a physical altercation with his stepdaughter to take the weapon from her after she shot him. The stepdaughter, who was not named because she is a minor, than ran into the backyard and ran away by jumping over a fence, the man told police.
The teenage suspect was then found not far from the home about 30 minutes later and taken into custody. She was taken to the Rankin County Juvenile Detention Center and will appear in front of Rankin County Court Judge Kent McDaniel Wednesday morning.
An investigation is ongoing and the State Medical Examiner’s office will conduct an autopsy to figure out the woman's cause and manner of death, WLBT reported.
USA TODAY is not naming the mother to protect the identity of the minor.