Gary man kills 4 family members

GARY, Ind. -- A woman whose nephew apparently shot four relatives to death before taking his own life says the mental health system failed to provide him with adequate treatment.\n"The system failed us; he needed help and didn't get it," Louvenia Walton said of her nephew, Terry Lee Dennie.\nWalton told the Post-Tribune that her 20-year-old nephew was schizophrenic and may have quit taking his medications.\n"This should never have happened," she said. "There were plenty of warning signs that should have prevented him from this."\nEarly Saturday morning, police said Dennie, 20, shot to death his mother, a brother, a sister and a 2-year-old nephew and then took his own life. The victims ranged in age from 2 to 41.\nDennie's grandmother, Elizabeth Walton, 82, suffered two gunshot wounds but survived. She lay on the floor, playing dead, and called police after the gunshots stopped.\nWalton, who was shot in the arm and in the side, was in stable condition Sunday at a Gary hospital, Sgt. Del Stout of the Gary Police Department said Sunday.\nStout said officers plan to interview her later Sunday about the shootings. Walton was too heavily medicated Saturday to speak to police, he said.\nStout said Dennie's relatives said they had long worried about his violent tendencies and his mental health problems.\n"Some of the family indicated that he had been violent toward his own family for some time. It's really a tragedy," he said.\nTyrone Walton, Elizabeth Walton's son, told The Times that Dennie waited outside the house until his victims arrived home from a party celebrating another relative's recent college graduation.\nChicago radio station WBBM quoted family members as saying Denny had recently been released from a mental-health treatment center and had a history of violence.\nStout said he was not sure if that was the case.\nGary Chief Detective Thomas Branson said Sunday that Dennie had several run-ins with Gary police, including a Sept. 19, 2002, incident at the same house where he held a gun to himself in the back yard, threatening to kill himself.\nThat incident ended when Gary police officers subdued Dennie using a shotgun loaded with bean bags and a Taser "stun" gun. He was then taken to a clinic for mental evaluation, Branson said.\nA neighbor, Patrick Fleming, told the Post-Tribune that Dennie was a straight-A student during his junior year at West Side High School, then dropped out of school. He had been a good kid, then developed psychological problems, Fleming said.\nThe four victims in Saturday's shootings were identified as Angela Walton-Scruggs, 41, Dennie's mother; Darion Dennie, 17, a brother of Terry Dennie; Ladanna "Mandy" Dennie, 18, a sister; and her 2-year-old son, Isaiah Dennie.\nThe Lake County coroner has not yet released his ruling on the shootings. He was performing autopsies Sunday on some of the victims and was not available for comment, an assistant said.