Beason

[legion]

Well, the story has hit the national media:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090922/ap_on_re_us/us_family_slain_illinois

A couple and three children were found slain in their central Illinois home in what a sheriff described Tuesday as a "brutal homicide," and detectives were trying to identify possible suspects.

Authorities discovered the bodies late Monday afternoon after responding to a 911 call about possible shots fired at the address, Logan County Sheriff Steven Nichols said at a news conference.

A 3-year-old girl survived the attack and was taken to a hospital in Peoria, he said.

Nichols declined to say why his office didn't release information about the slayings until Tuesday morning. He said detectives were following leads to try to identify possible suspects, but that authorities could only say that the suspect was considered "armed and dangerous."

Nichols warned area residents to lock their doors at night as a precaution.

Beason is about 40 minutes from Bloomington. I've already gotten an e-mail from a coworker that he was heading home for the day as he lived there.

Some info not in the article: The sheriff took his time to make the killings public, which led many people to believe it was a murder-suicide situation and the public was not in danger, but then he announces at a press conference that there is a killer on the loose.

It's also pretty unusual for a whole family be killed and the killer to be unknown to the family.

I think the lack of details about who the suspect is a problem. It seems like the sheriff isn't doing a very good job of keeping people informed of a potential danger.