April 28, 2009

FAIRHOPE (Alabama) - A MAN who blamed his estranged wife for their 4-year-old son's death in a traffic accident shot her and killed three people she'd been staying with, then died in a gunbattle with police, authorities said on Monday.

The initial shootings late Saturday happened within sight of a small white cross on the side of a rural highway marking where the boy had chased a skateboard into the path of a neighbor's pickup truck.

William Odell Wood II, 37, was in jail on March 9 on burglary and attempted murder charges in an unrelated case when his son, Austin Wood, was killed on US Highway 98 in the Barnwell community. The driver was not charged in the accident.

The boy and his mother, Rebecca Melonie Wood, 34, had been staying with Jesse Warrick Jr, 70, and his wife, Louise Lane Warrick, 67.

On Saturday, while he was out on bond in the burglary case, Wood showed up at the Warrick's trailer home and killed the couple and a 20-year-old grandson. The also shot Rebecca Melonie Wood, who was in stable condition at a hospital Monday.

After the shooting, Wood tried to elude officers. He was spotted a county away on Sunday and opened fire before he was shot to death by police, Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran said. -- AP