Utah man who killed family faced 2020 abuse investigation
CTV
A Utah man who police say killed his wife, her mother and their five kids before turning the gun on himself had been investigated two years prior for child abuse, but local police and prosecutors decided not to criminally charge him, new records released Tuesday show.
A Utah man who police say fatally shot his wife, her mother and their five kids before turning the gun on himself had been investigated two years prior for child abuse, but local police and prosecutors decided not to criminally charge him, new records released Tuesday show.
Police records obtained by The Associated Press shed light on warning signs and a previous police investigation into a violent pattern of behavior Michael Haight exhibited toward his family.
Authorities said they were aware of previous problems in the home but didn't elaborate during a news conference following the Jan. 4 killings in the small town of Enoch, citing an ongoing investigation.
In a 2020 interview with authorities, Macie Haight, the family's eldest daughter, detailed multiple assaults, including one where she was choked by her father and "very afraid that he was going to keep her from breathing and kill her."
The child abuse investigation followed an Aug. 27, 2020, police call from a non-family member reporting potential child abuse. Macie, then 14, told investigators that her father's violence started in 2017 and had included choking and shaking, including a recent incident where he grabbed her by the shoulders and banged her into a wooden piece along the back of the couch.
Two years later, police found eight bodies at the family's home, including Macie's. The murder-suicide rocked Enoch, an 8,000-person, southern Utah town on the outskirts of Cedar City where neighbors and members of the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints described the Haights as a loving family.
An obituary published in the St. George Spectrum last week described Michael Haight in glowing terms as an Eagle Scout, businessman and father who "made it a point to spend quality time with each and every one of his children." The obituary made no mention of the killings and was taken offline after backlash.
