New Delhi, April 20 -- A domestic massacre in Louisiana has left a city in mourning and a nation searching for answers after a 31-year-old former soldier opened fire across three homes in the early hours of Sunday morning.

In the grey quiet before dawn in Shreveport, Louisiana, a man drove to three separate homes, walked through their doors, and shot eight children dead. Seven of those children were his own. The youngest had not yet reached their second birthday. The oldest was twelve.

By the time the sun had fully risen, the gunman - identified by police as Shamar Elkins, a 31-year-old US Army veteran - was himself dead, shot by officers following a car chase into a neighbouring parish.

Shamar Elkins served in the Louisiana Army Natio...