[Stardust]

SONORA, Ky. - Three people were killed and a fourth wounded after a domestic dispute triggered a shootout Tuesday on a rural road near Interstate 65 in central Kentucky, state troopers said.

The shootings shook the isolated community of Sonora, about 56 miles south of Louisville, where horse-drawn buggies driven by the Amish compete with trucks for the narrow road space between farm fields.

"This doesn't happen here," said Wayne Creekmore, a retired state police detective who lives about a mile from where the shooting took place in Larue County near Sonora.

Master Trooper Norman Chaffins said David Walker and his wife, Barbara Walker, both 51 years old and from Elizabethtown, were killed along with a third person, 55-year-old Steve L. Bottoms of Radcliff. Walker's daughter, April M. Roberts, 32, of Elizabethtown, was shot in both legs and was being interviewed by investigators at University of Louisville Hospital, the trooper added.

Chaffins said investigators were trying to piece together events and how Bottoms was connected to the Walkers and Roberts. Chaffins said more than one gun was used and "probably" more than one person fired a shot, but there wasn't a shooter still at large.

"We're still trying to sort out who did what," Chaffins said.

Troopers received a call from a man at around 11:33 a.m. reporting a shooting on Heying Road, about four miles east of the interstate near the Hardin-Larue county line.

Upon arrival, troopers found an older maroon and silver Ford truck and a newer red Dodge truck blocking the road and the Walkers and Bottoms shot to death, Chaffins said. Investigators found Roberts a short time later at an EMS dispatch center in Hardin County, where she drove a third vehicle after the shooting, Chaffins said. That car has been impounded.

"I can't tell you what she was thinking and why she went there," Chaffins said.

Chaffins was unsure how the four people ended up in the isolated area or if any had a connection to the community.

"We don't know what they were doing in that area," Chaffins said.

Neighbors and friends dropped by 84-year-old Dorothy Hill's home, which sits on a small hill at a corner just yards from where the trucks stopped. From Hill's driveway, the Ford truck could be seen diagonally on the road blocking the Dodge truck. Hill's son, Creekmore, said his mother heard shots being fired, but didn't want to speak with reporters.

Judy Coxey came upon the scene while going to visit a family member who lives nearby. Coxey, 61, said she saw the bodies of a man and woman in the grass behind the Ford truck, the rear of which was in a ditch abutting Hill's yard and garden.

"It's going to rock Larue County for a bit," Coxey said. "It's scary and it's painful to see people laying in the garden dead."

Police fanned out to talk with neighbors, mark key spots with small flags, take measurements and remove the bodies as a cold rain fell and a wind whipped across the fields. Investigators pulled a large blue tarp over the front of the Dodge truck, which appeared to be missing its windshield.

"It looks like they was chasing each other and caught up with each other," Creekmore said. "They had a shootout."

The shooting was the second to rattle a rural Kentucky community in two days. On Monday, police charged 27-year-old Matt Denholm in a double shooting in the small town of Berea in which one man was killed and another was injured.

http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/201...|FRONTPAGE