An investigation is underway in Nebraska after a white man shot at his Guatemalan neighbors, severely wounding them before fatally shooting himself.
The incident happened around 4:30 p.m. Friday in Crete, a small town about 70 miles southwest of Omaha.
William Booth, 74, started blasting at a group of about 15 in a yard next door with a shotgun before dying by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Seven people, including four children between the ages of 3 and 10, were wounded. They were all expected to survive.
Three remain hospitalized, including two children, according to Nebraska State Police.
Booth was described as reclusive but confrontational when he interacted with his neighbors, the Omaha World-Herald reported. One neighbor said he “hated everybody” and clashed with white neighbors, too.
Crete Police Chief Gary Young said the family that was attacked complained to the department in May that Booth made obscene gestures and told them to “speak English” and “go back to where they came from.”
“My understanding is that additional contacts were made between the suspect and the family, and the family told them that they would contact the police and that resolved the situation, so we had no further contact,” the chief said.
Young added that investigators hadn’t ruled out a racist motive behind the shooting.
“The context to ‘go home’ and ‘speak English’ lends itself to that,” he said
Earlier this year, the family of Ralph Yarl, a Black Missouri teen who was shot by Andrew Lester, an elderly white man, when he went to the wrong door, filed a civil suit against the shooter and the local home owner’s association for neglect.
In March, upstate New York man Kevin Monahan was sentenced to more than 25 years in prison for shooting and killing Kaylin Gillis, a woman who was traveling in a car that was using Monahan’s driveway to change direction after taking a wrong turn.