In the quiet hills of Breathitt County, Kentucky, a Saturday morning turned into a scene of unimaginable horror. On September 11, 2010, Teresa Gail Fugate Blanton, a 30-year-old woman, was tragically killed in a shooting rampage that claimed the lives of four other people before the gunman took his own life.
The perpetrator was identified as 47-year-old Stanley Neace.
The violent outburst was reportedly triggered by a domestic dispute with his wife, Sandra Neace, over how she cooked his eggs. Enraged, Stanley Neace armed himself with a 12-gauge pump shotgun and unleashed a wave of violence in the roadside mobile home park in and around Jackson.
His first victims were in his own home. He then proceeded to a neighbor's trailer, where some had sought refuge. In the ensuing chaos, Teresa Gail Fugate Blanton was fatally shot. The other victims of the rampage were identified as Neace's wife, 54-year-old Sandra Neace; her 28-year-old daughter, Sandra R. Strong; a neighbor, 31-year-old Dennis Turner; and another neighbor, 40-year-old Tammy Kilborn.
After the shootings, Neace returned to his own home. When law enforcement arrived at the scene around 12:30 p.m., they heard a final gunshot. They found Stanley Neace's body on his porch, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The community was left to grapple with the senseless violence that shattered a quiet morning and took the lives of five innocent people. The investigation confirmed that Neace was the sole person responsible for the deaths, bringing a grim closure to the tragic event.
