MIAMI (Reuters) - Police in southeastern Georgia have launched a murder investigation after a 22-year-old man reported returning to his mobile home to find seven members of his family killed.
An eighth victim died in the hospital on Sunday.
"I just got home. My whole family's dead," Guy Heinze said in a 911 emergency call to police on Saturday in the coastal town of Brunswick, Georgia. He said the dead included his father, uncle and cousins.
Authorities on Monday released the tape of the 911 call, in which a sobbing and barely coherent Heinze says "it looks like they been beaten to death."
Michael Toler, 19, whom Heinze described as a cousin with Down syndrome, died on Sunday from injuries he had received.
A ninth member of the group, who was not identified, was still in a hospital.
Glynn County police did not say how the victims had been killed, but The Brunswick News quoted an official close to the investigation as saying they had been shot. Police Chief Matt Doering said victims included children to adults in their 40s.
County authorities offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the deaths, the newspaper reported.
Heinze was arrested on charges of tampering with evidence, obstruction of an officer and illegal drug possession but police have not said he is a suspect, the paper said.
(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
