‘It is very, very painful’: Family mourns after suspected murder-suicide that left 4 dead

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE/Gray News) - The family of a Kentucky woman and her children shot and killed in a suspected murder-suicide still has questions about why the killings took place, even as they mourn.

Police responded around 9:30 a.m. Saturday to the 4500 block of East Pages Lane in Louisville, Kentucky, on a report of a shooting with multiple victims.

According to the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office, 49-year-old Mary Stanton and her two daughters, 17-year-old Adrianna and 11-year-old Brianna, were found dead from gunshot wounds.

Husband and father Gary Stanton, 60, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police say he shot his wife and daughters before shooting himself.

Days later, Mary Stanton’s family is still confused how the shooting took place and why it happened, WAVE reports.

“It has broken us completely,” said Mary Stanton’s sister, Emily Muchemi. “We have got no words to describe the pain we’re going through.”

Muchemi said she learned what happened to her sister shortly after the incident. She said she was in her home in Washington and received a Facebook message from someone asking her to call them.

“I just hung up the phone and just started screaming. I don’t know for how long,” Muchemi said. “I was screaming. Everyone was coming at me and asking me, ‘What’s going on?’ And I kept just saying, ‘They are gone. He’s killed them.’”

Muchemi said her sister’s death was a second blow for their family. In November, they traveled to their native Kenya to bury Muchemi and Mary Stanton’s father.

Muchemi said Gary Stanton and the children accompanied their mother on the trip. She said, at the time, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Now, a few weeks later, Mary Stanton’s mother is forced to come stateside to bury her daughter.

“It is very, very painful that I cannot explain,” said her mother, Ejidiah Waithaka. “And if I start showing my children that I’m in pain, I don’t how it will be. So, I have to be strong.”

Muchemi described her sister as a leader, the first in their family to emigrate to America. She said Mary Stanton became a nurse and, most recently, started a business.

She called Adrianna a dedicated and focused student who had plans for her future.

“It’s devastating to have to tell them that they are gone, and we were just with them just a few weeks ago,” Muchemi said. “We just don’t understand. We just do not know what transpired.”

As Muchemi and her family members grapple with their confusion regarding the incident, they’re leaning on faith to help them grieve, overcome and forgive.

“We need to separate the act from him,” Muchemi said. “We don’t know what happened. We don’t know what caused it. He was a good father to the girls.”

Mary Stanton’s family has set up a GoFundMe page to help acquire the money necessary to bring her three brothers from Kenya to the United States for the funeral.

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