Man injures 7 neighbors in shooting that may have been racially motivated, police say

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN/Gray News) - A Nebraska community is shaken after police say one of their neighbors opened fire and injured seven people in what may have been a racially motivated shooting.

Authorities received multiple 911 calls about a shooting in Crete just after 4:30 p.m. Friday. The suspect has since been identified as 74-year-old Billy Booth, KOLN reports.

Booth allegedly fired a shotgun from his home, hitting seven people in the yard of a neighboring home. Police later found Booth dead in his home from a suspected self-inflicted shotgun wound.

The victims include three adults and four children ranging in age from 3 years old to 43. All of them are expected to be OK.

A representative from the League of United Latin American Citizens, who is assisting the family, says it’s been a traumatic few days for them. The family has lived in Crete for 10 years after coming from Guatemala.

The Nebraska State Patrol says Booth and the family didn’t speak immediately prior to the shooting. But Crete’s police chief says they had a prior history. Police had taken a report that Booth yelled at the family who lived at the home to “go home” and to “speak English.”

Authorities say while it’s still under investigation, they aren’t ruling out the shooting being racially motivated.

The grandson of one of Booth’s neighbors says there have been issues with Booth in the past but nothing like this.

“Sometimes, he was just a normal person and nothing really you would even think of,” Sawyer Hanson said. “And then other times, he was kind of just yelling about anything or everything. No one really did anything to him to ever get any of that anger out of him.”

Crete Mayor Dave Bauer says while the shooting is something that shouldn’t have happened, it doesn’t represent the community.

“Crete is the same old, good old Crete that it’s always been,” Bauer said. “We have had changes throughout the years, but they’re good changes. And so when the community just embraces that and we just move forward, we will get this behind us.”