Mansfield murder-suicide: Ohio dad, Chris Casler shoots & kills 9 year old son, Oliver dead then self as neighbors are left reeling as to what went wrong?
‘He was a good man who loved his son,’ according to neighbors…. A 40-year-old father and his 9-year-old son have died in what Ohio police suspect was a murder-suicide over the weekend.
The father and son were found deceased in a Mansfield, Ohio, apartment in the Saturday afternoon, Nov. 29, after officers responded to a report of ‘two individuals with gunshot wounds,’ according to a news release from the Mansfield Police Department (MPD).
Authorities responded to the scene around noon and located the father and son inside the home. The son was taken to the nearby OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital, where ‘he later succumbed to his injuries,’ police stated. Cops pronounced the father dead at the scene.
Mansfield neigbhors left dumbfounded, insist dad loved son
‘While the circumstances appear to be a murder-suicide, detectives from the Mansfield Division of Police, along with the Richland County Coroner’s Office, continue to investigate,’ Mansfield police said in the release. ‘Out of respect for the family, the names of the individuals are not being released at this time.’
Although Mansfield declined to identify the father and son, social media posts identified the father as Christopher ‘Chris’ David Casler, and the boy as Oliver.
‘We didn’t hear no arguments,’ Francis Gray, a neighbor told ABC6. ‘Nobody heard anything around here at all. He just took his son to a basketball game prior to that, before he came home. He really loves his son, though, like really loves him.’
‘Something doesn’t seem right,’ Gray said. ‘[The father] doesn’t seem like he would do anything like that.’
The girlfriend of the father was also in the home at the time of the shooting, but was not physically hurt, Cleveland 19 News reported.
Mansfield dad described as ‘amazing guy’
Frances Gray, a nearby resident and friend of the father and son, told the outlet, ‘I was asking her what happened, what’s going on, and she was probably in shock or whatever.’
‘She was like, ‘I don’t know.’ She just heard a pop,’ Gray added of the girlfriend. ‘And she was upstairs is all she kept on saying.’
Gray and her husband, Shawn McArdle, expressed confusion and disbelief at the possibility that the father — who was also their landlord — and his son died in a murder-suicide.
Gray described the father as ‘an amazing guy’ who ‘loved his son.’
According to Gray, the man was also ‘a good friend’ and ‘good landlord’ who ‘gave people chances that didn’t need chances.’
No known motive
‘We can’t see him doing any harm to his son because his son meant everything to him,’ she continued.
McArdle, meanwhile, said, ‘I don’t believe it at all to save my soul. He would never harm his own child at all whatsoever.’
Authorities declined to offer a motive as to what led up to the father gunning his boy dead and then self.
