It was a sad day for our little town yesterday. Please think of us as we try to cope with what happened and why.
Here's the article from our newspaper.
A gunman distraught over his recent divorce opened fire in a downtown McComb bank Wednesday, killing a customer and bank manager before taking his wife hostage, killing her and then himself.
Robert Lanham Jr. walked inside the Regions Bank branch on Main Street in McComb and shot and killed customer James Frederick Fayard, 53, of McComb, and bank manager Ronnie Larrimore, 38, of Tylertown, said McComb police Chief Billie Hughes.
The gunman then left with his ex-wife, bank employee Rachel J. Lanham, as a hostage.
“It wasn’t a bank robbery. It was a domestic situation,” Police Chief Billie Hughes said.
Authorities found Rachel Lanham’s body along Highway 51 near Fernwood a short time later, though Hughes said it remained unclear how she died. Initial reports said she was shot, but Pike County Coroner Percy Pittman said she may have been killed while trying to get out of the pickup truck when it went off the road and hit a tree.
After the collision with the tree, Robert Lanham Jr. was able to keep driving. He continued south into Magnolia, and lawmen found him in the pickup in a ditch on Prewett Street. He apparently had shot himself.
He was taken to Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center, where Pittman said Lanham died.
The Lanhams, who married in 1999, divorced in August 2007, citing irreconcilable differences, according to Amite County Chancery Court records.
Rachel Lanham, who worked at the bank as a financial advisor for Morgan Keegan, and Larrimore were reportedly dating.
That drew the ire of Robert Lanham Jr., who had reportedly made a recent threat at another Regions Bank branch to harm Larrimore.
With crime scene tape still stretched across the front of the downtown bank and investigators’ cars parked outside, a few groups of people were still standing around Main Street into the mid-afternoon Wednesday, flanked by television station vans and police barricades limiting traffic.
Most had heard the shooting was a domestic dispute, but few could give details of the incident.
Jan Case, at Office Automation Center, a store next door to the bank, said she hadn’t heard or seen anything unusual until police cars arrived.
“I didn’t feel unsafe,” she said. “It happened fast; there was no lingering around.”
Meanwhile, those who knew the victims reflected on their lives.“He would help anybody who needed it,” Fayard’s mother, Geneva McGehee Lamana of McComb, said of her son.
Heather Lamb, who used to work with Larrimore at an insurance agency, said she’s still trying to accept his death.
“Great dad. Real active. An upstanding guy in the community,” Lamb said, describing Larrimore with a tremble in her voice. “An overall great guy, and those are hard to come by.
“He will dearly be missed.”
I can't help but think of the families and friends that are grieving. So so sad.
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