Soldier killed wife, daughter, then shot himself, police say
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Preliminary autopsy findings revealed Spc.
Kip Lynch, a 21-year-old military policeman, was the person
responsible for the double homicide discovered Monday morning at
the family's South Anchorage apartment, police spokesman Lt.
Dave Parker said. After killing his family, Lynch shot himself in the head, according to police. He remained hospitalized in critical condition on Tuesday with injuries that have precluded him from communicating with detectives. The carnage was found Monday morning after two military police officers went to the apartment to find out why Lynch had failed to report to work. They knocked on the door of his home in the 9900 block of William Jones Circle and got no answer, so a landlord let them in about 7:30 a.m., police said. They found the bodies of Lynch's wife, 19-year-old Racquell
Lynch -- who goes by Kellie -- and the couple's daughter,
8-month-old Kyirsta Lynch, both of whom had been shot. Anchorage police arriving on scene later discovered Kip Lynch critically injured with a gunshot wound at another location in the apartment in an eight-plex. He was rushed to Providence Alaska Medical Center, where he underwent emergency surgery for life-threatening injuries. |
Kip Lynch, of Jacksonville, Fla., serves with the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, at Fort Richardson and just two months ago returned from the brigade's year-long deployment in Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border.
He met Kellie, his long-time girlfriend, at First Coast High School, where he played football, said Diana Oliver, a 55-year-old friend of the family from Jacksonville. After graduating, Lynch joined the Army in September 2007 and went to boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
"He really liked the regimen behind it and the discipline. He loved
it," Oliver said. "It was very difficult for (Kellie) to have him gone."
Lynch arrived at Fort Richardson in March 2008. He married Kellie amid
snow-covered trees in an outdoor ceremony in Alaska on Feb. 7, 2009,
according to Kellie's MySpace page. Lynch deployed to Afghanistan with
the 4/25th the same month, though Oliver said he was able to come back
for a while when Kyirsta was born -- on Aug. 15, 2009.
Kellie Lynch stayed at home in Jacksonville while her husband was
deployed, Oliver said.
Lynch was in the brigade's Special Troops Battalion and based in the
Khost Province of Afghanistan during the deployment, said Maj. Bill
Coppernoll, a spokesman for U.S. Army Alaska.
"He was assigned as a gunner while conducting mounted patrols," Coppernoll said. "He was performing duties as a military policeman: Providing security, going on patrols, doing routine military police duties while in combat."
The brigade suffered 12 combat deaths in the deployment, but it wasn't clear Tuesday whether Lynch saw any action. There was no record of Lynch being injured in combat, Coppernoll said.
All the returning soldiers went through a reintegration process and also were part of a test of a new mental health program Army officials say was designed to decrease the stigma of post-combat mental-health problems, he said.
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