After hearing screams and pounding at her front door, Kathy Peterson found a hysterical woman and three young girls cowering, one of the girls covered in blood. She heard gunshots nearby in the middle class Salt Lake City suburb as she opened the door and brought them inside to safety.
"He's killing everybody and he's trying to kill us," the terrified woman told Peterson through tears.
Just outside the home in Sandy, police said yesterday, Jeremy Patterson had shot and killed Memorez Rackley and her six-year-old son and critically injured her 9-year-old son.
The shooting came three days after Rackley called in a harassment report to police Saturday morning and asked them to tell Patterson to stop contacting her, said Sandy police Sgt Jason Nielsen. He declined to say what the outcome of that conversation was, or detail the nature of the harassment.
Authorities said the two were or had been in some sort of relationship and that the killings they described as targeted happened Tuesday afternoon just after Rackley picked her boys up from elementary school.
Rackley was walking about six blocks from the school when she flagged down a driver - the same woman who showed up at Peterson's door.
The unidentified female driver picked up Rackley and her boys but her car was then rammed by a pickup truck driven by Patterson, who got out and opened fire. Also shot and injured was the driver's daughter, said Sandy police Sgt. Jason Nielsen. Patterson then killed himself.
The extent and nature of Rackley and Patterson's relationship and the motive for the shooting remained unclear yesterday as detectives probed leads, Nielsen said.
Rackley was married to another man but Nielsen did not provide more details. Patterson was not the father of her children, he said.
Rackley family spokesman Jeff White said he didn't know the exact nature of the relationship between Rackley and Patterson. He declined to elaborate on the state of the Rackley's marriage but said "they both loved each other very much and they were husband and wife."
Rackley's husband is doing as well as can be expected for someone dealing with the loss of the mother of his children as well as his youngest child, with another son fighting for his life, said White, who has been a family friend for 30 years.
"She was an amazing mother, she's beloved by all her friends and family ... Just totally adored by the whole community," White said about Rackley.
Nielsen said investigators are still trying to determine if the woman who picked up the family just happened to see them or knew them.
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