Police found three active duty service members dead on Saturday night in Portsmouth, Va.
Police responded to a late-night call and found two women dead from gunshot wounds and the body of a man at a separate location with a self-inflicted gunshot wound – all of whom were Navy corpsmen, WAVY reported Tuesday.
The bodies of 19-year-old Shianne Soles from Washington and 23-year-old Meaghan Burns from Massachusetts were found at a 7-Eleven gas station with gunshot wounds to their torso. Both women were identified as corpsmen with Naval Medical Center Portsmouth.
In an adjacent parking lot near Dollar General, police found the body of 22-year-old Donovan Moora who has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Moora was stationed at Camp LeJeune, N.C.
Moora is believed to have killed Soles and Burns before he killed himself in his vehicle.
A spokesperson for the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery confirmed that all three were Navy corpsman, The Virginian-Pilot reported.
Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) also confirmed their identities and is treating the investigation as a double homicide and suicide.
A witness who lived across the street said he watched the whole ordeal.
“I thought someone was banging on the screen door, so that’s why I come running down the stairs, and then next thing you know you look across the street and the dude is freaking out, screaming, running to his car,” Robert Joyner told WAVY.
Joyner said he ran across the street to the women’s car, looked in it, and saw both of them deceased and bullet hole marks through the windows.
“After he got done letting off the rounds, I saw him run from her car to his,” he added. “You heard him get in his car, and then soon as he stopped the car you heard a bunch more rounds.”
#BREAKING UPDATE @PortsmouthPD believe 3-deaths @7eleven was result of double murder-suicide. All 3 members of the military @WAVY_News https://t.co/QIfaJCl8ps
— Brett Hall (@BrettHNews) May 7, 2019
Joyner said he will never forget the terrifying incident.
“It’s terrifying cause this is supposed to be a neighborhood, you’re not supposed to wake up one night after sitting in your room and you find two people laid over dead in the car right in front of the busiest convenience store on the whole block,” he said.
Other area residents said commotion and sirens are not an unusual sound, but the gunshots were disturbing.
“We hear it all the time. They run up and down the street. Fire trucks, police cars, so I just happened to look out the door and saw the yellow tape over at the 7-Eleven and that let me know that something else had happened,” said Keith Jones, who lives across the street.
As police continue to investigate, they confirmed the incident was isolated and the public is not under threat.
