US High School Student Shoots Dead Five Before Graduation

A high school student is thought to have gone on a shooting rampage hours before his graduation ceremony, killing three members of his own family and two other people before turning the gun on himself.

Authorities said a preliminary investigation indicated that Scott Moody, 18, had shot dead his mother and two grandparents, as well as a high school friend and a 14-year-old girl, at two neighbouring farmhouses near Bellefontaine, Ohio.

His sister, Stacy, 15, was wounded but survived, raising the alarm by calling a friend on her mobile phone. She is in hospital in a critical condition.

Moody and one of his victims, Megan Karus, 19, were due to graduate from Riverside high school on Sunday.

Sheriff Michael Henry said investigators had found several guns at the scene, including a rifle inside the farmhouse where the bodies of the two students, as well as Moody's mother, Sheri Shafer, 37, and Paige Harshbarger, 14, a friend of his sister, were found.

The bodies of Moody's grandparents, Gary Shafer, 67, and Sharyl Shafer, 66 - who last week placed an advertisement in the local Bellefontaine Examiner newspaper wishing him "Good luck in your future!" - were discovered in a farmhouse a quarter of a mile away.

The sheriff said deputies had records of 10 "nuisance-type" call-outs that police made at the farmhouse where the first four bodies were found, but none involving complaints of violence.

The shootings have devastated the small rural community. People drifted in and out of the sheriff's office on Sunday afternoon, hugging and crying.

"I've been doing this for 35 years and I've never seen anything like this," said Lieutenant Chuck Stout of the Logan County sheriff's department. "Dealing with a small community like this, everyone knows everyone," he told Associated Press.