Jet Collins, 13, a boy from Raleigh, North Carolina, was found dead on the morning of June 24, 2025, alongside his father, 49-year-old Shannon Collins, and his 15-year-old brother, River, inside a home on Rand Road in southern Wake County near Garner. Deputies and fire crews arrived to a house fire and discovered all three with gunshot wounds, prompting investigators to treat the scene as both arson and homicide while the state medical examiner worked to determine the sequence of events.
In the weeks that followed, autopsy findings established that Shannon Collins shot both of his sons before shooting himself; the house then burned. Reporting cited the medical examiner’s conclusions that River was shot while asleep and that Jet was also shot before their father’s suicide, clarifying the case as a murder–suicide rather than deaths caused by the fire itself.
The loss reverberated across the community. Jet was remembered as a rising eighth grader at Garner Middle School, with friends and neighbors memorializing the brothers’ closeness and love of music in the days after their deaths. An obituary published by the family’s funeral home marked Jet’s death on June 24 and noted his ties to the school community, while local coverage shared glimpses of the brothers playing together and the tributes that grew around them.
No arrests were made. Investigators identified Shannon Collins as the perpetrator, and the Wake County Sheriff’s Office—assisted by the State Bureau of Investigation—closed in on the murder–suicide determination as autopsy results came in. Advocacy tracking in North Carolina later documented the case as a parent–child homicide followed by suicide, noting that the children’s mother sought court protection the morning after a domestic incident at the home.
