In Bulverde, Texas, on Friday afternoon, Daniel Boor, 53, was teaching his 12-year-old son to shoot when the boy unintentionally shot his father in the head, killing him. In Wichita, Kansas, on Saturday night, a woman came home from work to find her mother, Houng Pham, 62, and her brother, Cody Ha, 23, shot to death. In Lemoore, California, on Sunday, Danielle Dever was fatally shot by her boyfriend, Johnny Castro, who was then killed by police.
Boor, Pham, Ha, and Dever were among 148 people killed by guns over Thanksgiving weekend. In total, at least 438 people were shot nationwide from Thursday through Sunday, according to Gun Violence Archive, which compiles shooting statistics from police reports and news clips. The number is likely to increase as more reports come in.
On Thanksgiving Day alone, at least 95 people were shot, a third of them fatally.
Among the holiday weekend’s victims:
- On Thanksgiving Day, bullets from a drive-by shooting penetrated the Columbus, Ohio, home where Adrian Scott, 34, was preparing macaroni and cheese. She was killed. “Every Thanksgiving, they’ll probably think about this,” a police spokesperson said of Scott’s family.
- On Thursday night in Chester, Virginia, a Lutheran youth pastor was arrested in the shooting deaths of his wife, Jeanett Gattis, 58; her daughter, Candice Kunze, 30; and her daughter’s boyfriend, Andrew Buthorn, 36. Police said the attack was sparked by a domestic dispute. “I had no clue that they were having problems that I knew of, but behind closed doors is behind closed doors,” a neighbor said.
- On Friday, five teenage boys were wounded when someone opened fire on them outside a Cleveland liquor store. When Abdel Bashiti, the 12-year-old son of the owner of a nearby beauty supply store, went outside to investigate, he was hit by a stray bullet and killed. Abdel loved sports, and was described by a friend of his father as “one of the most loveable kids you’d ever meet.”
- Shortly after midnight on Saturday, Ernesto Delahoz, 20, and his friend Bradley Sartain II, 18, were found shot to death at an apartment complex in Independence, Missouri. The complex was the scene of a fatal shooting just two months ago. Delahoz leaves behind a 7-month-old daughter.
- On Saturday afternoon in Spotsylvania, Virginia, Meghan Scully, 38, was found shot to death in a home along with her parents, Mary Scully, 68, and Robert Scully, 69. Police said it was a double murder-suicide but have not revealed who pulled the trigger.
- Also on Saturday, a clerk at a Valero gas station in Killeen, Texas, was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend, who then killed himself.
- On Sunday afternoon, Laquana Whitfield was found fatally shot along with her boyfriend, Gerald Tate, and his father, Gerald Parker, at a home in Slaughter, Louisiana. Police arrested Whitfield’s ex-boyfriend, who they say also shot and killed a man during an argument at a gas station in a neighboring town later that day.
- In Chicago, 44 people were shot this Thanksgiving weekend, eight of them fatally. The city logged fewer shootings this year than it did during the same weekend last year, the Chicago Tribune reported, but this year’s Thanksgiving weekend shooting toll was nearly double that of 2015, and more than twice that of 2014.
In 2016, 104 people were killed by guns each day on average, whether by their own hand or someone else’s, according to figures released earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last year on Thanksgiving Day, 122 people were shot across the United States, 31 of them fatally. Last Christmas, 124 people were shot, 46 fatally. On New Year’s Day, 251 people were shot, 74 of whom died. This year on the Fourth of July, 62 of the 208 people shot were killed.
