BIRTHDAY HORROR
Chase Garvey, 21, named as Florence mass shooter who ‘stormed birthday party & killed 4 before turning gun on himself’
The shooter has been identified by police
THE heartless suspected shooter who struck seven people after bursting into a family's backyard pool party has been identified.
Chase Garvey, 21, murdered four in the first mass shooting Florence, Kentucky, has ever seen, police said.
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Police arrived at a house in Florence, a Cincinnati suburb, to find seven people had been shot, according to Cincinnati.com.
According to neighbors, the residence was in the middle of a birthday party when the shooting began.
Authorities said Garvey knew the people at the party and that it was happening, but showed up uninvited.
Police said the gunman, who they later found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, had already fled the scene by the time they arrived.
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Witnesses told police that the shooter then took off in a car that cops were able to track down shortly after.
Police tried to pull him over after finding the car, but the shooter continued to flee police, which prompted a chase.
The mad chase ended when Garvey shot himself, and his vehicle veered off the roadway and into a ditch.
Garvey was pronounced dead after arriving at St. Elizabeth Covington.
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He is believed to have acted alone, according to police.
Florence Chief of Police, Jeff Mallery, identified the four victims as Shane Miller, 20, Hayden Rybicki, 20, Delaney Eary, 19, and Melissa Parrett, 44.
Garvey was previously arrested and charged for raping a 13-year-old when he was 18, according to Kentucky's criminal records.
A report obtained by local Fox affiliate WXIX-TV revealed Garvey admitted to raping the girl in his car during a police interview in 2021.
Last April, he was sentenced to five years of probation after pleading guilty to an unlawful transaction with a minor.
NEIGHBOR'S HORROR
Bobbie Guy, a woman who lives close to the crime scene, told the outlet she was unaware of what was going on.
Other neighbors were shocked to learn that a shooting had occurred.
“When I tell you this is a great neighborhood, I’m not kidding you,” Tony Kinmon, who has lived in the neighborhood since 2006, said.
“We have never dealt with this before,” Mallery said.
“I know it’s gone on throughout the nation, but this is the first time that we’ve had a mass shooting in Florence.”
One neighbor, 23-year-old Leah Moore, told The Associated Press that she heard what she thought were firecrackers at roughly 2 a.m. but went back to bed
A little while later, she was awakened again by police lights, and that is when she knew something was wrong.
“I saw crime tape, I saw a bunch of cops, I saw all the kids in one of my neighbors’ yards across the street,” Moore said.
Moore, who knew Parrett and her family well, described them as “great, amazing people.”
“She is so wholesome, so welcoming, and she is the best person I’ve ever met,” Moore explained.
The Florence Church of God shared a Facebook post shedding more light on the shooting.
"Hello everyone," the post began.
"We have an urgent request from Sister Kathy Schick. Her friend, Caroline, who has visited our church recently is in need of prayer for her family."
"The shooting that took place in Florence last night was at her home," continued the post.
"A man came in uninvited on a Birthday Pool Party and killed four people."
"One of them was Caroline's daughter, and her granddaughter is in the hospital with gunshot wounds."
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Although this is the first mass shooting in Florence, which has a population of about 36,000 people, it is now the second shooting to occur in a Cincinnati suburb.
Earlier this week, another shooting left three people dead in the Corryville neighborhood.
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