Delavan Shootings: Kids and Firecrackers in the Summer

I don't want to think about the death toll on S. 2nd St. in Delavan, Wisconsin on Saturday night.

I don't want to think of three little children being shot, two fatally.

I don't want to think of four adults shot dead.

All that bloodshed in one house, on one summer night.

Delavan -- On a clear night, at the close of a picture-perfect June day, it was easy to drift off to sleep. And the noises in the distance, the pops in the dark, well, it had to be kids and firecrackers.

Only it wasn't.

Residents along S. 2nd St. awoke Sunday to a stunning tragedy: Six dead, including infant twins. A 2-year-old girl hospitalized after being shot in the chest.

And a mess of relationships and connections that authorities would not discuss, even by late Sunday night.

Police would not say whether the shooter was among the dead, and whether the series of killings ended in suicide. But they issued a statement that said the community was not in danger from the shooter.

Walworth County District Attorney Phil Koss said he couldn't reveal all the details of the case but added, "it is clearly a domestic situation."

Relatives have told the press some of the names of the dead, but we don't know much about what happened.

Identities of the victims were not released. But family members identified one - Ambrosio Analco - as the father of the three children. Another, Vanessa Iverson, 19, was at the house visiting friends Saturday night, her family said.

I really can't understand the lack of control, the anger that would enable someone to go on a killing spree and to murder infant twins and attempt to murder a 2-year-old.

At 19, even one of the adult victims was barely more than a kid.

Whatever was behind the domestic dispute, whatever wrongs there might have been, I can't fathom anyone responding by taking away lives, especially those of the innocent children.

Not all that many summers would pass before the infant twin boys would have grown old enough to be kids playing outside with firecrackers.

So many young lives ended so abruptly. So many other lives, the survivors of the victims, have been shattered.

Really what can be said about this?

It's impossible to make sense of the senseless.

I woke up on Sunday morning to the news of the shootings. It's surreal that a "domestic situation" resulted in six people dead in Delavan.

We're horrified, but life goes on.

It won't take long for the cameras and the reporters to leave.

We have the luxury of moving on and savoring the long, sunny days of summer, cool breezes coming through the open windows at night, and listening to the soft chirps of crickets broken by the pops of firecrackers -- a beautiful American summer.

May the dead rest in peace.