Deadly rampage blamed on anger over breakfast

JACKSON, Ky. – A man facing eviction over his hostile temper became enraged by how his wife cooked his eggs and killed her, his stepdaughter and three neighbors with a shotgun before shooting himself Saturday.

Trooper Jody Sims of the Kentucky State Police said Stanley Neace killed the five people in two mobile homes in rural eastern Kentucky about 11:30 a.m., then went to his home and turned the gun on himself.

Neighbors in the roadside mobile home park said Neace, 47, stormed across the lawns of about seven homes in his pajamas and fired dozens of shots from a 12-gauge pump shotgun.

Sims said that when state police arrived about an hour after the gunfire began, they heard a single gunshot and found Neace’s body on the porch in the unincorporated community of Mount Carmel in Breathitt County.

Sherri Anne Robinson, a relative of two of the victims, said witnesses to the shootings told her that Neace became enraged when his wife did not cook his breakfast to his liking.

Robinson said that when his wife fled to a neighbor’s trailer, Neace followed and shot her and the others, but allowed a young girl to flee.

“He just got mad at his wife for not making his breakfast right and he shot her,” Robinson said. “She tried to run to tell my family and he shot them too because they found out about it.”

The victims were identified as the gunman’s wife, Sandra Neace, 54; her daughter Sandra R. Strong, 28; and neighbors Dennis Turner, 31; Teresa Fugate, 30; and Tammy Kilborn, 40.

Fugate is Robinson’s sister, Turner is her cousin and Kilborn was a witness who happened to step onto the porch of another trailer when she heard the commotion.

Landlord Ray Rastegar said he had begun the process of evicting Neace, who had lived in the trailer park for about seven years, because he had become increasingly hostile toward neighbors recently.

“He was unpredictable,” Rastegar said. “Little things would set him off.”