A 15-year-old Texas teenager murdered his mother, father, sister, and two dogs, then posted graphic photos of their bodies on social media, warning that he was going to commit a school shooting. Once surrounded by the police, he committed suicide.
Police revealed that the minor, William Quince Colburn III, posted “disturbing” photos of the murdered family. Among the victims are the teenager’s parents, 63-year-old William Colburn Jr., 53-year-old Jana Colburn, his 13-year-old sister, Emma Colburn, and their two pets.
Police officers began investigating Colburn III after being alerted to disturbing images he posted last Wednesday to a group on social media, the Aransas Pass Police Department explained in a statement. In the post, Colburn III threatened to continue his raid of violence in a school but did not say which one.
Finally, police located the teenager Wednesday night in a trailer park near Aransas Pass. When asked to leave, he refused, so a negotiation began.
After a few minutes of shouting exchanges, authorities heard a gunshot and the blow of someone falling to the ground, police said. When the uniformed officers entered the motor home, they found Colburn III dead from a gunshot wound, as well as the bodies of three other victims.
Another of the daughters of the murdered couple, Mahria Batts, heard the sad news the next morning, when her mother had her birthday.
“This morning, we all got up excited to congratulate our mother on her 53rd birthday,” she revealed on a GoFundMe page. “But instead, we have been devastated by the news that has broken our hearts,” she wrote. “As you can imagine, this is difficult for us right now,” he said. “We are hurt. We don’t understand it. We are lost. We are angry,” she added.
San Patricio County Sheriff Oscar Rivera was grateful for the swift action of the police in the case. “I’m glad we were able to find him before something worse could have happened,” Rivera said.
He claimed that had it not been for the ‘swift action’ of the social media team and the alert from other teens within the group where the threat was made, “we may well have been working on an even more tragic event this morning.”
The teenager was not registered in any local school and authorities believe he was homeschooled. “I’m not sure which school he planned to attack, but he certainly had the weapons and ammunition to do so,” Rivera said.
When they found him, already lifeless, the teenager had at least two pistols and a rifle.
Days ago, two Florida teenagers were arrested after authorities in the city of Fort Myers, on the west coast of the peninsula, discovered that they had concrete plans to carry out a mass shooting at their middle school, which would have been comparable with the murders carried out on February 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in the city of Parkland in South Florida, where 17 people (14 students and 3 school employees) died.
The incident occurred at Marsh Middle School. A student told a teacher that one of the now detained had a gun in his backpack. School authorities immediately intervened and determined that the student was working in conjunction with another student. The minors, two boys ages 13 and 14, are now being held in a juvenile prison facing charges of conspiracy to carry out a mass shooting.
When the police intervened, they discovered that the children were studying in detail how the Columbine massacre had occurred in 1999. Back then, two students entered Littleton, Colorado, high school armed, killing 12 students and a teacher. The Fort Myers students had details of what the Columbine killers’ operation had been like.