Hull man wanted in slaying of woman kills himself during police pursuit
A Hull man shot his own father in the leg, shot and killed his girlfriend, then hours later he shot and killed himself following a police pursuit that ended in Banks County, authorities said Monday.
The shooting death of the woman, 38-year-old Shara Mattox, and the wounding of the father, Lawrence Epps, occurred about 8 a.m. Friday on the1300 block of Garnett Ward Road in Hull, according to the Madison County Sheriff’s Office.
The suspect, William Blaine Epps, 40, died of a self- inflicted gunshot wound about nine hours later, according to sheriff’s Capt. Jimmy Patton.
Sheriff’s investigators are trying to pin down a motive for the violence, but the shooting appears to have been provoked that morning when Lawrence Epps informed his son that his mother had died.
Shortly afterward, Patton said the son grabbed a firearm that belonged to his father “and started shooting.”
“The only thing we have at this time is he received the news about his mother being deceased and it set him off,” Patton said. The Epps couple was divorced and she died at another location, according to Patton.
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The son and Mattox, described by Patton as the suspect’s friend, arrived at the father’s house that Friday morning.
A neighbor of Lawrence Epps called 911 to report the shootings.
The elder Epps had gone to his neighbor’s home where a deputy found him lying in a pool of blood in the sunroom of the house, according to the report.
The deputy said he asked the wounded man what happened and he “replied that there was a girl dead in the car behind his home.”
Deputies knew of William Epps, because the deputy reported that authorities had been to the home multiple times for domestic problems. Patton said some of those disputes were related to the son having drug issues.
The deputies located Mattox in a blue Acura and discovered she was dead from a gunshot wound to the neck, according to the report.
Deputies issued a lookout for William Epps and the black Volvo station wagon he drove away. During the next eight hours of the manhunt, deputies received only one confirmed sighting of the fugitive in the Blacks Creek Road area northwest of Ila.
“He stopped at at least one residence and they called after he left,” Patton said.
Then about 5 p.m. a Georgia State Patrol trooper traveling along Young Harris Road in an upper region of the county near Banks County spotted the Volvo, Patton said.
Patton said Epps fled from the trooper traveling several back roads until he reached Georgia Highway 59 and traveled inside Banks County.
“He crashed into a building, an industrial type building,” Patton said. “The trooper got out and Banks County got there and as they approached the car, the guy shot himself.”
After the shooting, Epps had remained hidden from law enforcement in Madison County.
“Where he was holed up we don’t have any information right now, but it appears he was in that area all day long,” Patton said.
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Deputy says suspect in slaying of Hull woman kills himself
