WCSO: Shooting near Thrall was a murder-suicide

Except for some crime scene tape along County Road 424, there’s little to indicate that something terribly wrong took place inside this home near Thrall. On Wednesday, Williams County Sheriff Robert Chody ruled the shooting to be a murder-suicide.

However, he is still searching for a motive. “Is mental health the issue, are guns the issue that are not secured here, anger the issue there are so many things we don’t have answers to those questions, we know this there to dead people and we have kids without a father and a mother,” said Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody.

Deputies were called to the house around 12:30 a.m. in the morning on Wednesday, January 3, 2018. They found Ellen Rachelle DeHart dead from a gunshot wound and her husband Robert Lee DeHart Dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Sheriff Chody say it appeared the DeHarts spent the past few days holding a family holiday gathering at the house. Three adults and three children, the oldest about nine-years-old, were inside at the time but no one saw the actual shooting, according to Chody.

“We know it was an argument we don’t know what about and I don’t know that the family knows this time they told us they heard argument taking place but they didn’t describe yet in detail what it was about because I don’t think they know yet,” said Sheriff Chody.

Residents who spoke to FOX 7 say the DeHarts recently moved to Thrall, back in the summer.

They spent a lot of time riding their motorcycles and nothing seem to be out of the ordinary, according to Lynette Blattner. “No just normal every day frequent customers. Is there anything that you saw the relationship between the two that would indicate something this explosive could happen? No not at all they look like normal people they were happy all the time it seemed like.”

The bodies were sent to Fort Worth for autopsies.

This is the second deadly incident to happen here in the past week.

Back on the 26th a driver of a truck was killed after veering off the road and flipping over. The wreck happened not far from where the shooting took place Wednesday morning.