WARNING: Contains distressing audio.
FacebookHarrowing police calls have been released of the moment a mother fatally shot her two daughters on a public street in Texas, before being shot dead by police.
Officers started receiving emergency calls about shots fired near Houston, Texas at about 5:00 pm, the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office wrote on Facebook.
When they arrived to the scene, they found 17-year-old Madison Sheats and her 22-year-old sister, Taylor, had been shot. Madison died on the street, while Taylor was flown to a hospital, but also died. When their mother refused to drop her weapon, she was shot and killed by an officer.
According to the sheriff’s office, Christy Sheats had called a family meeting in their home with her daughters and husband, Jason, when she took out ‘a gun and shot both girls’.
Happy Daughter’s Day to my two amazing, sweet, kind, beautiful, intelligent girls. I love and treasure you both more than you could ever possibly know.
Posted by Christy Byrd Sheats on Friday, September 25, 2015
Now, the emergency calls have been released.
The first two calls were made by her daughters — 17-year-old Madison and 22-year-old Taylor — and the third by a neighbour who asked to remain anonymous and witnessed the attack from across the street, Buzzfeed reports.
Pleading and screaming can be heard in the background in both calls from the daughters. In the first call, a woman can be heard begging ‘please don’t shoot’ while another person says: “I’ll promise you whatever you want.”
Those calls were followed by the neighbour’s, who immediately requested an ambulance, saying: “I believe they were shot.”
Speaking to the dispatcher, the caller says he ran to the back of his house because of the ‘lady with a gun.’
He describes the woman as ‘Caucasian’ and ‘wearing a purple dress’ standing over one of her daughters in the street.
He says to the dispatcher:
It looks like both of them [the daughters] are alive. Both of the child — persons — these two ladies are both alive… She’s trying to shoot again on top of her, but apparently she don’t have no more bullets.
She’s going inside the house now. Hopefully she’s not getting no more bullets — because it looks like she’s going to look for more bullets.
She’s coming back again and apparently she has bullets now.
The neighbour then says the mother shot one of the daughters again as she was trying to run away.
FacebookPolice later revealed that Christy’s husband had been able to run to the end of the road, while his wife pursued their daughters.
Officers have not released a motive for the attack and have not addressed reports that Christy Sheats suffered from mental illness, according to Buzzfeed.
After every gun attack in the U.S, this is another harrowing example of why access to guns should be tightened – if not made illegal altogether.
Our thoughts are with the girls’ family and those affected.
