A Tiny Town, Suddenly Smaller by Seven, Mourns and Wonders, Why?

NVDL: South Africa has per capita one of the highest crime rates in the world (41 per 100 000). This is around 80 times higher than Japan, and twice as high as the USA. In South Africa around 50 people are murdered daily. That's a full busload each day, 19 000 people a year, enough to fill a decent sized soccer stadium.

By MONICA DAVEY

Residents of a tiny town in the Northwoods of Wisconsin were reeling yesterday, struggling to understand how six of their young people wound up dead at a homecoming weekend pizza party at the hands, the police said, of a local law enforcement officer who was also, after all, one of their own.

In Crandon, a town, like so many in Wisconsin’s lake-filled northern region of water skiing and snowmobiling, school was closed yesterday. Ballgames were canceled. Ministers held quiet prayers. And the entanglements of a truly small town — 2,000 people live in Crandon — felt especially painful.

The family of Tyler Peterson, the off-duty sheriff’s deputy who the police say shot and killed six people on Sunday and injured a seventh before dying, apparently of a gunshot wound, issued a statement of apology to the town yesterday afternoon.

“We also feel a tremendous amount of guilt and shame for the horrible acts Tyler committed,” the family said in a statement read aloud at a news briefing by Bill Farr, a local pastor. “We are struggling to respond, like most of you. We don’t know what we should do.”

The Petersons’ statement went on, “There is nothing that happened before or after yesterday’s events that has given us any insight into why.”

Before 3 a.m. Sunday, state authorities said, Mr. Peterson, 20, who also served as a part-time police officer in Crandon, arrived at the home of his former girlfriend, Jordanne Murray, 18. Ms. Murray and others — most of them graduates or students of the same close-knit high school in town — were watching movies, dozing and eating pizza.

Mr. Peterson, who many people said had a tumultuous relationship with Ms. Murray and had not been invited to the gathering, argued with the group, then left, state authorities said. But he quickly returned with a weapon — a rifle similar to the type and model carried by local sheriff’s deputies, though officials said they had not yet determined whether Mr. Peterson’s work rifle was used.

He sprayed the apartment with at least 30 rounds of gunfire. Ms. Murray died. So did five others, ranging in age from 14 to 20, including two young men whom schoolmates said Mr. Peterson considered close friends. A seventh person, Charlie Neitzel, 21, was wounded and remained hospitalized.

From The New York Times. For the rest of the story, click here.