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4 teens shot deadin West Virginia

Four teenagers were shot to death outside a West Virginia  home over the weekend, and a girl who lives next door said she heard gunfire and a girl pleading for her life.
/ Source: The Associated Press

Police brought several people in for questioning and searched for clues Monday in the shooting deaths of four teenagers on the morning after the prom.

The teenagers were killed early Sunday in the front yard of the apartment house where one of the victims lived. Police believe that man, Dante Ward, may have been the intended target and the other three were killed to prevent them from identifying the shooter, police Capt. Steve Hall said.

No immediate arrests were made, but nine people were brought in for questioning, five of whom were from Detroit, Hall said. Two were later released.

“We may have the shooter in custody,” Hall said. “They are being interviewed, they’re being interrogated. I’m not saying we do or we don’t. We just don’t know.”

The victims were Ward, 19; Eddrick Clark, 18; Michael Dillon, 17; and Megan Poston, 16. Poston was Dillon’s date to his high school prom Saturday night. Authorities said the two other victims did not attend the prom.

Poston was Dillon’s date to the Huntington High School prom Saturday night. Authorities have not determined whether the two other victims attended the prom. Dillon was a junior at the school, while Poston attended another high school.

The couple was supposed to be at a lock-in at the school after the dance, but their names were not on the registration sheet, Cabell County schools Superintendent William Smith said.

Girl, 12, heard one victim
Christy Thomas, a neighbor of Ward’s, said her 12-year-old daughter awoke early Sunday to the sound of gunshots and screaming, and saw two bodies when she looked out her bedroom window.

“She said the gunshots sounded like cannons going off,” said Thomas, who was at work at the time. “She said she heard a girl say, ‘Please don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot me.”’

A neighbor said he and his daughter were awakened by gunshots and a girl pleading for her life.

“There was a burst of gunfire, and then there was a small pause, and that’s when I heard the girl say, ‘Please don’t kill me, I’m sorry,”’ Michael Thomas said. “And I heard two more gunshots.”

Thomas added: “You send your kids to the prom and you just hope they don’t drink and drive. You’d never expect they’re going to get murdered in cold blood.”

Three of the teens were dead when police arrived and the fourth died a short time later at Cabell-Huntington Hospital, police said.

Garry Dillon, who called police after his son didn’t come home when the lock-in ended at 5 a.m. Sunday, said he had no idea why his son and Poston were at Ward’s house.

“I just hope the police get the monster that did this to those babies,” Dillon said.

Boys described as friendly
An emotional crowd of about 100 people gathered at the site of the shooting Sunday. One woman, apparently the mother of one of the victims, broke through police tape to get to her child.

“I don’t know how you console a person like that, that’s lost a young child,” police Capt. Steve Hall told WOWK-TV. “I don’t know.”

Thomas said Ward moved into the house next to her about two months ago. Though she didn’t know him well, Ward was always social and friendly, Thomas said.

Ward was a 2003 Huntington High School graduate, while Clark went to school in South Point, Ohio, across the Ohio River from Huntington.

George York, principal of South Point High School, called Clark “a wonderful guy” and said he was to have graduated next Sunday.