Police say shooter
waited for in-laws
SPRING, Texas -- A man charged with killing four children and their parents was dressed as a deliveryman when he forced his way into the family's suburban Houston home and held the children at gunpoint until their parents arrived, police said Thursday.
A day after the slayings, investigators slowly built a picture of Ronald Lee Haskell, 33, who was the slain couple's estranged brother-in-law.
Haskell is accused of killing his sister-in-law, Katie Stay, and her husband and four of their children ranging in age from 4 to 14.
The lone survivor of the attack, the couple's 15-year-old daughter, was in critical condition in a Houston hospital.
Haskell had a handful of previous run-ins with law enforcement in Utah, where he had lived with his wife. Neighbors said Haskell's marriage was so rocky that Stay went to Utah last fall to help her sister escape the relationship and start a new life in Texas.
It was not immediately clear why Haskell showed up in the Houston suburb of Spring on Wednesday, demanding to know where he could find his wife.
Law enforcement had initially said Haskell was the father of the slain children but later corrected that account.
7 killed in blaze
in Massachusetts
LOWELL, Mass. -- An intense fire ravaged a three-story apartment building before dawn Thursday, killing four adults and three children, forcing tenants to jump or hand their children to safety and leading to dramatic rescues from upper floors.
The victims in this former mill city about 25 miles northwest of Boston were all found in units on the top floor of the building, which had a liquor store on the ground floor and apartments on the upper floors, fire officials said. Nine people were hospitalized with injuries not considered life threatening.
Authorities have not identified the victims in Thursday's fire. The cause is being investigated.
Teenager charged
in armory shooting
LOBELVILLE, Tenn. -- A 15-year-old was charged Thursday with one count of criminal homicide in the fatal shooting of a longtime member of the National Guard at a Tennessee armory, according to the state's Bureau of Investigation.
The suspect didn't work at the armory, which is usually locked, but somehow gained access to the building and fired several shots Wednesday evening, authorities said. One struck Sgt. 1st Class Michael Braden, 45, who had been with the guard for more than 20 years, law enforcement and Guard officials said. He died later at a hospital.
The teenager, questioned as a person of interest early Thursday, was being held without bail at a juvenile detention facility, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesman Josh DeVine said. The suspect was arrested without incident at his family's home in Lobelville, about 50 miles southwest of Nashville.
-- COMPILED BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF FROM WIRE REPORTS
A Section on 07/11/2014