Background: The residence on West 12th Street in Hilliard, Florida (WJXT/YouTube). Inset: A child’s toy is visible in the yard where the shooting occurred (WTLV/YouTube).
A child fleeing from a horrific scene guided authorities to three deceased individuals and a critically injured suspect in a situation described by a Florida sheriff as “heartbreaking.”
Around 8 p.m. on Thursday, the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office was alerted to a potential shooting at a residence on West 12th Avenue in Hilliard, Florida. Upon arrival, deputies attempted to establish contact with someone inside, but received no response, Sheriff Bill Leeper stated at a Friday press briefing.
Then the deputies opened the unlocked front door.
“As the door was open, they observed a female on the floor between the living room and dining room lying in blood,” the sheriff detailed.
As deputies moved in to make sure there was no present danger, they saw a man “lying on the floor in the living room in a puddle of blood,” according to the sheriff.
The man reportedly had an SKS-style 7.62 caliber assault rifle next to him.
Deputies continued their “protective sweep” of the home – finding a woman in the hallway bathroom “with blood and brain splatter all over the wall and the floor,” Leeper said.
The deputies also came across a third woman “lying in a pool of blood on the floor in a bedroom across the hall from the bathroom.”
Investigators checked the women and recognized they were “obviously deceased.” The man, however, “had a slight pulse,” and he was airlifted to a nearby hospital in Jacksonville.
Investigators believe the man, identified as 34-year-old Christopher Bobby Rowell, 34, first shot one woman in the living room/dining room area, before shooting another woman in the bathroom and then the final woman in the bedroom.
“He eventually returned to the living room, where he shot himself in the head,” the sheriff added.
Amid all the carnage, a 5-year-old girl was able to escape.
A neighbor from across the street told authorities the child “who was inside the residence at the time of the shooting came to their house, banging on the door and stated the suspect had killed others inside the home,” Leeper detailed. The neighbor then called 911.
The child gave an account of the trauma she endured. She said she was in the back of the house when a gunshot rang out. As she walked down the hallway, she saw a woman on the floor between the living and dining rooms.
“Another female grabbed her, put her in the bathroom,” Leeper said. “When that individual was shot, she got blood splatter on her.”
The sheriff then shared that it was “some type of domestic incident,” but he didn’t want to speculate more until the investigation proceeded.
As of Friday, Rowell was “clinically deceased” and his organs were going to be harvested. The names of the victims were not given, but everyone was related and the three women were adults, authorities said, according to independent Jacksonville-based TV station WJXT.
The child was “safe” with other relatives, the sheriff said, describing the girl as “very strong” and “very brave.” Still, he said was “traumatized” by the incident.
“If you look at a positive with something like this, this tragic, it’s that the child was not injured, thank God,” Leeper said. “And the shooter had the courage to shoot himself.”
“It’s heartbreaking and totally, totally was unnecessary,” the sheriff added.
A neighbor – believed to be a different resident than the one who called the police – said she began her Friday morning by seeing law enforcement searching her backyard, finding a bullet had hit her home.
“It was crazy to think about,” the neighbor said, according to Jacksonville-based NBC affiliate WTLV. “You just don’t hear about this kind of stuff in Hilliard.”
“I knew that it hit,” Gray added of the bullet. “I just didn’t know where, and we knew it didn’t come inside; we were thankful for that.”
Hilliard is located in the very northeast of Florida, located about 30 miles north of Jacksonville.
