(NewsSpace.com) – Mother’s Day is typically a day to celebrate the women in your life who have raised or are raising children. However, for one family, it turned deadly. A suspect in a triple homicide was shot several states away from where police allege he killed his mother and two sisters.
Ridgeland, Mississippi, police officers were called to a home on Old Canton Road around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 12, for a welfare check. There, they discovered the bodies of 76-year-old Ida Thomas Welch, 56-year-old Vickey Renee Welch, and 42-year-old Crystal Lynn Welch, all shot in the head. Authorities were quick to name a suspect, Ivory James Welch III, son and brother of the respective victims, whose vehicle was seen leaving the scene of the crime.
Ridgeland Police Chief Brian Myers said they tracked his car “all the way through to Dallas and understood it was obvious he was on the run.” Shortly after the discovery of the bodies, police obtained a warrant for Welch’s arrest and the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force went on the hunt for the suspect. Welch was located by Arizona troopers and when they tried to apprehend him, he shot at them. They returned fire, fatally wounding him.
Soon after Welch’s death, police in Arizona notified those on the case in Mississippi. Authorities have yet to determine a motive for the killings, but Myers said, “He may have been upset about a funeral and his birthday.” Welch also had a long criminal history of assaults as well as documented mental illness.
Crystal Welch worked at the Mississippi College School of Law as an associate clinical professor and served as the president of the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Mississippi. The organization released a statement in her honor, saying she was “an enthusiastic leader… always asking what more she could do to support [the] team and [its] work.”
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