A 2019 plea deal handed to a Shreveport Army National Guard veteran who fired a weapon near a high school let him keep legal access to a gun seven years before he killed eight children on April 19, public court records show.
Shamar Elkins, 31, pleaded guilty in October 2019 to illegal use of weapons after admitting he fired five rounds at a car less than 300 feet from the fence line of Caddo Magnet High School in Shreveport, Louisiana. Children were playing outside the school when the rounds were fired in its direction, police records show.
Elkins told officers he had stepped out to meet a friend when another occupant of the car pulled a gun on him. He fired as the driver pulled away.
A second, more serious charge of carrying a firearm on school property was dismissed. Elkins was placed on 18 months' probation in Caddo District Court and walked away without a permanent firearms ban.
Under Louisiana's gun-possession statute, only certain felonies, such as felony illegal use of weapons, sex crimes, drug crimes, and crimes of violence, trigger the state's 10-year bar on firearm possession. The offence Elkins pleaded to sat below that threshold, leaving him legally free to own a gun once his probation ended in 2021.
On April 19, Elkins shot his wife at a home on Harrison Street, drove roughly a quarter-mile to the 300 block of West 79th Street, and killed eight children inside a house in the Cedar Grove neighbourhood, Shreveport police said. Seven of the victims were his own children.
The children who died ranged in age from three to 11, Shreveport Police Corporal Chris Bordelon confirmed to CNN. A 13-year-old boy survived after jumping from the roof and sustaining broken bones. Elkins carjacked a vehicle, led officers on a chase into Bossier Parish, and was fatally shot during the confrontation.
It is thedeadliest US mass shooting since January 2024, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Ten days before the attack, Elkins shared a Facebook prayer asking God to 'help me guard my mind and my emotions' against depression, anger, anxiety, and panic.
Two weeks earlier, he had posted a photograph of himself surrounded by seven of his children after an Easter church service.
Source: International Business Times UK
