I just shot and killed my two kids, and I shot my wife. Im going to kill myself now.
As soon as the 911 dispatcher answered his call, Randall Coffland went straight to the point.
His voice was calm, his tone almost nonchalant.
“I just shot and killed my two kids, and I shot my wife,” he said. “I’m going to kill myself now.”
The call was made Friday, when the quiet Chicago suburb of St. Charles, Ill., saw its first killing in years.
The deaths of 16-year-old twins Brittany and Tiffany Coffland at the hands of their father, who then turned the gun on himself, stunned even law enforcement.
“This is a pretty calm community. We’ve had, I would say, a small handful of shootings in the last 30 years,” St. Charles Deputy Police Chief David Kintz told The Washington Post. “This is by far and away not normal. This is heartbreaking.”
Randall Coffland’s call lasted about a minute and a half.
“I’m going to kill myself now,” the 48-year-old said again after giving his address to the dispatcher, who tried for several seconds to persuade Coffland to stay on the line.
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“Sir, sir, sir, sir. Sir,” the dispatcher said. “Stay on the line with me. Sir … Sir?”
The call ended.
After his wife arrived at the apartment, he told her that their daughters were dead, Kintz said. Then, he shot her in the leg. Terrified, she called 911 — almost at the same time her husband did. Her ear-piercing screams can be heard almost immediately.
“Oh my god! My husband shot my kids!” she told the dispatcher.
For the next several minutes, the dispatcher tried to calm her down, asking her where she was, whether she was safe and assuring her that help was on the way.
“We’re going to be on our way. Don’t hang up, okay?” the dispatcher said.
“My God! My Godddd!” the woman screamed, her voice shaking, her breathing fast and heavy.
Then, the dispatcher asked her where her husband was.
Again, she screamed.
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“Do you know where the gun is?” the dispatcher asked several seconds later.
She responded, “I don’t know if he has it. Please just get over here. … He shot me.”
Then, she screamed her daughter’s name, again and again.
“Brittany, Brittany, Brittany! Brittany!”
The call lasted about seven minutes. Later, the woman can be heard talking to first responders who had arrived at the apartment.
Kintz said the last homicide in St. Charles happened in 2008, when a drunk man stabbed another. He said the family moved to St. Charles within the past year or two. Aside from a previous minor domestic incident that didn’t involve physical abuse, there’s nothing in the family’s history that could have hinted that violent deaths would happen, he said.
Why Randall Coffland killed his daughters is still unknown.
“That’s what we’re still trying to work on,” Kintz said.
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Police found two 9mm handguns inside the apartment. One was found near Randall Coffland’s body, and the other was in a closet, police said. Kintz said investigators have no information on where the guns came from, or whether they belonged to Randall Coffland.
Anjum Coffland, 46, had been taken to a hospital. She’s in stable condition, Kintz said.
A memorial of flowers, hearts, candles and three crosses were outside the apartment building Saturday, according to media reports. The twins lived there with their father, while their mother lived in a separate apartment, Kintz said, adding that investigators are trying to find out why Anjum Coffland moved out.
Gabrielle Willaert, 17, a classmate of Brittany’s, said she occasionally talked about trouble at home, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
“She would always talk about how she didn’t know if she could get her assignments done because she wasn’t having a good home life,” Willaert told the newspaper. “But she stayed so strong, you could tell how much she was hurting.”
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The two teenagers were students at St. Charles East High School.
The school tweeted on Sunday: “RIP Tiffany Coffland and Brittany Coffland, true Saints undeserving of this tragedy. Please wear purple or blue tomorrow to honor them.”
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