Samuel Tyler Ericksen

Mass Murderer

Samuel Tyler Ericksen and the 2025 Mount Washington Triple Homicide

The Fatal Shooting on Beacon Street

Samuel Tyler Ericksen was identified by Cincinnati police as the suspected gunman responsible for killing three young people in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 31, 2025. The shooting occurred at approximately 1:30 p.m. inside an apartment building in the 1500 block of Beacon Street, a residential area east of downtown Cincinnati. Police and emergency personnel responding to the address discovered a devastating scene involving Ericksen and three victims. Twenty-seven-year-old Bemnet Deresse and one of the two female victims were pronounced dead at the location. The other woman was transported to a hospital in critical condition but later died from her injuries. Ericksen was also found suffering from what police described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound and was taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. The victims were identified as Bemnet Deresse, Eden Adugna and Feven Adugna. Some early news reports spelled the sisters' surname as Adunga, but other reporting identified them as Eden and Feven Adugna. Eden was 22 years old, while Feven was 20. The two young women were sisters who had immigrated to the Cincinnati area from Ethiopia. Deresse was a 27-year-old man whose friends remembered him as cheerful, hardworking and capable of making people laugh.

Victims of the Mount Washington Shooting

• Bemnet Deresse, 27: Shot and killed on August 31, 2025, at an apartment building in the 1500 block of Beacon Street in Cincinnati's Mount Washington neighborhood. Friends described him as happy, hardworking and humorous. Local reporting indicated that he worked at a store on Montana Avenue.
• Eden Adugna, 22: Shot on August 31, 2025, at the Beacon Street apartment building. She was one of two sisters killed in the attack and worked as a pharmacy technician at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati.
• Feven Adugna, 20: Shot on August 31, 2025, at the same Mount Washington location. She was Eden's younger sister and also worked as a pharmacy technician at Good Samaritan Hospital.

Ericksen's Connection to the Victims

Investigators determined that the shooting was not a random attack. Cincinnati police said Ericksen knew at least one of the victims and had a romantic interest in, or a romantic relationship with, one of them. Authorities did not publicly disclose every detail of that relationship, and early reports differed slightly in how police characterized it. Additional reporting indicated that one of the victims had received a photograph of a firearm from Ericksen approximately one week before the shooting. That reported communication raised questions about whether the photograph had been intended as a threat, warning or attempt at intimidation. Because Ericksen died before he could be interviewed or prosecuted, investigators were left to reconstruct the events through electronic communications, witness accounts and physical evidence. Police stated that they did not believe the killings were motivated by racial, ethnic or religious hatred. The fact that the victims had Ethiopian connections prompted public questions about a possible hate-crime motive, but Cincinnati police said their investigation did not support classifying the shooting as a hate crime. Instead, the available evidence pointed toward a personal connection involving Ericksen and at least one victim. ...

Confirmed Victims: (4)

Bemnet Deresse 27 yr old Male

Police: Suspect in Mt. Washington shooting knew at least one victim