Seven die in Samson within one city block

SAMSON -- Family and neighbors were gathered on the front porch of Alford and Phyllis White’s house mid-afternoon Tuesday, most likely enjoying the warm afternoon sun when darkness came upon them.

Related:

Geneva Shooting Special Report - Latest news, photos, video and more

A Shattered Peace in Rural Alabama

Deadliest rampage in Alabama History

Victims of the Geneva County Shooting

School buses were finishing their afternoon routes when Michael McLendon, 28, of Kinston, pulled his maroon 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse into his aunt and uncle’s yard at 201 W. Pullum Street.

Armed with multiple weapons, McLendon opened fire on members of his own family at the White home. McLendon shot and killed his uncle, his cousin and her son, and a visiting neighbor and her 18-month-old daughter. Also shot was the neighbor’s infant daughter.

A few feet away from White’s small house was a blue trailer where McLendon’s grandmother lived. Hearing the shooting, she opened the door of the trailer and was shot dead.

As McLendon sped away, he shot and killed another man, a pedestrian walking to a friend’s house on South Wise Street.

Seven people died within a block of each other.

Just around the corner on West Main near downtown Samson, McLendon shot and killed two others – a woman at a gas station and a man driving on Highway 52. Two other men were shot in the vicinity of the Main Street gas station.

That’s nine dead and three injured in a town of less than 2,000 people in rural southeast Alabama.

Samson city councilman Roger Baine, owner of the local auto parts store, said in a town this small, friends become family.

“When you are in a community of 2,000 people, you do know everybody,” he said. “This is one of those tragic things you just don’t understand. It’s terrible.”

**************
Coming up on 24 hours after the shooting, Pullum Street is quiet in a way that lets you know something is amiss.

Police and media vehicles are pulled beside the road near the intersection of Wise and Pullum streets and in every yard there are people. Some have video cameras, others badges. Local authorities keep watch and go in and out of the houses of victims.

“No interviews,” an assistant district attorney says.

“They don’t wanna talk,” says another.

The day grows hotter but time has not yet begun to heal. With his gun strapped to his side, a Samson police officer corrals big city media from New York and Atlanta – attempting too late to keep the peace and still the fears.

Right now, police say, family members need some time.

“It’s just shock,” Police Chief Gary Weeks said. “All these are good people. This is just too close to home.”

Birds happily announce the coming of spring as seven friends of Geneva County Sheriff’s Deputy Josh Myers sit on the front porch and stand in the yard of the Myers’ home at 200 West Pullum.

Not knowing much what to do with themselves, the young men grab a plastic ball and lob pitches to Isaac Myers, the 3-year-old son of Josh Myers. Isaac escaped the gunman Tuesday, law enforcement said, and may not realize his mommy and sister are gone, his baby sister recouping in a Pensacola hospital.

***********
Alford White was a nice man by all accounts. Humble. A hard worker. Salt of the earth, people said. As the former city shop supervisor, White was over the street, sanitation, water and sewer departments. People knew him. He was employed with the city for 14 years before resigning his job in 2006.

The city was White’s first employer just out of high school. He worked in the water department for two years. He had held other jobs too, on a produce farm and at a local milling company, friends say.

White’s daughter, Tracy Wise, 34, was also a former city employee. She had left her job with the city around the same time as her father did. She was the former assistant city clerk and magistrate and had been employed with the city for nine years. Her husband, Murray, was also a former city employee. The Wise’s only child, Dean, 15, was a ninth grader at Samson High School.

Neighbors say the Wises had recently moved into a new double-wide trailer, placed on their lot at 202 Pullum St., just down and across the road from Tracy’s parents, the Whites.

The Myers were not long back in Samson. Josh’s mother and grandparents are from the Geneva County town and city officials say the family came back to the area in 2007. Andrea Myers stayed home with the couple’s three young children.

“Josh came in as a police officer, then he went to work with the county,” Baine said. “There again, good people and innocent people. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

**************
Talk about wrong place, wrong time and the seventh victim in Samson comes to mind.

James Starling, a father of two, got off work at Dollar General around mid-afternoon, went to his duplex apartment on Wise Street and took a bath, according to his neighbor Lagretta Bradford.

“He was walking to his best friend’s house,” she said, pointing south, just across Main Street. “I moved in here in December and he and his wife moved in from (apartment) number 7 to number 13, next to me.”

Starling’s wife, Beth, is four months pregnant, Bradford said, and the couple has two daughters, ages 2 and 4.

“He was real nice and sweet,” she said of her neighbor. “He’d come to my door and it was open, he’d always say good morning. I don’t think Beth has realized it has happened. She had to go to the hospital last night. Her pressure was so high. She just kept saying he was gone, he was gone.”

Seven Dollar General employees will say goodbye to someone they considered family next week.

Dollar General Manager Diane Cook said workers put a large black ribbon on the door of the store Wednesday. Employees plan to be at Starling’s funeral, which might be held Monday on his 25th birthday.

“It’s going to be so hard to say goodbye,” Cook said. “I’m just really going to miss him.”

Friends described Starling as a family man who didn’t go out a lot. He was originally from Geneva.

Bradford’s son, Philip Coleman, knew Dean Wise and attended school with him. As the shooting was occurring, Philip was waiting on a friend to come over to play basketball outside. That friend was at the Big Little/Inland store, where the eighth victim, Sonja Lolley Smith, was killed.

Bradford fears what might have been.

“My son would have been right there,” she says, pointing again.

As she stares down the empty street where her neighbor collapsed, she covers her mouth with her hand.

“It hurts me,” she said, shaking her head. “I just broke down when I heard what happened. It just hurts.”

*************

As counselors make their way from the high school to the First Baptist Church, grief is acknowledge as the community moves one day closer to acceptance.

Many residents cannot comprehend this act of extreme violence by one they consider one of their own. After all, many attended school with Michael McLendon. They shared rituals and looked forward together as members of the Samson High School Class of 1999.

“Most every one of these people were customers of ours,” said Jessica Wise, who works at her parents’ store, Southern LINC in downtown Samson. “We saw these people and dealt with them. We went to school together.”

Nobody – not a soul in this quiet community – ever imagined such a tragic event would enter their lives and shake their comfortable sanctuary.

Samson Mayor Clay King has not yet moved past the questions.

“I don’t really know what words to use.... How did this happen? Why did it happen? I am just in shock.”