Seven people found slain in Georgia mobile home

BRUNSWICK, Ga. – Seven people were found slain and two critically injured Saturday at a mobile home park built on the grounds of a historic plantation in southeastern Georgia, police said.

Glynn County police Chief Matt Doering called it the worst mass slaying in his 25 years of police work in this coastal Georgia county. He wouldn’t say how the victims died.

A family member called 911 at about 8 a.m. Saturday after discovering the bodies inside a dingy mobile home shaded by large, moss-draped oaks with an old boat in the front yard.

At an afternoon news conference, Doering declined to say whether police believe the killer was among the dead or remained at large. No arrests had been made.

Investigators were talking to neighbors about whether they saw or heard anything unusual, but hadn’t found any witnesses to the crime. Police hadn’t interviewed the survivors, who remained in critical condition Saturday night.

“I assume they know something, but we have not been able to speak to them,” the chief said.

All seven bodies were tentatively identified by Saturday evening. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was scheduled to perform autopsies today.

Located a few miles north of the port city of Brunswick, the mobile home park consists of about 100 spaces and is nestled among centuries-old live oak trees near the center of New Hope Plantation, according to the plantation’s Web site.

The 1,100-acre tract is all that remains of a Crown grant made in 1763 to Henry Laurens, who later succeeded John Hancock as president of the Continental Congress in 1777.