10/3/2021- 1:29 p.m.
Tennessee — A man killed three family members in a shooting rampage inside a Maury County home Friday morning, authorities said.
The Maury County Sheriff’s Department said Nathanial Pipkin shot and killed his 11-year-old sister, his mom and another man.
MCSD couldn’t confirm the adult male victim’s relationship to the shooter but did say everyone involved was family.Maury County news conference on triple homicide.
Shots rang out just before 6 a.m.
One family member managed to escape through a window, run to a neighbor’s house and call 911.Officers arrived within minutes to find multiple dead victims, including a young Maury County Public Schools student.
The killer had already fled by the time officers arrived.Pipkin reportedly fled in a silver Mustang that was spotted by Monteagle Police later that morning. Along with the help of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, they were able to bring the suspect into custody just before 9 a.m. more than 100 miles away from the crime.
MCSD said Pipkin was found with multiple guns and was suited up in ballistic body armor.Within three hours this guy is 100-plus miles away and he doesn’t know that we have a clue who he is and he is taken into custody,” MCSD Sheriff Bucky Rowland said. “A lot of great work.
Pipkin was arrested back on March 2 on a charge of unlawful possession of a weapon.
Multiple agencies assisted in the investigation, including Metro Nashville Police Department, Coffee County Sheriff’s Office, Marion County Sheriff’s Office, THP, Grundy County Sheriff’s Office and Monteagle Police.Pipkin is behind bars in Maury County and will be charged with three counts of homicide.
MCSD reached out to school resource officers in Maury County to contact school counselors to help with grieving students “once the news is out that one of their classmates has been murdered.”The family member who called 911 is doing fine.
Authorities aren’t identifying him at this time out of privacy, saying “they went through a horrible situation.”My heart breaks for a family that’s been destroyed today,” Sheriff Rowland said.
This is not the first time tragedy has struck the community of Maury County. Back in 2018, a mom killed her four adopted children in a quadruple murder-suicide.
“It’s a great place to live and raise a family,” Sheriff Rowland says, but “there’s nothing happening here or not happening here that’s not happening across the state of Tennessee and across our nation.”
