‘It is very, very painful’: Family mourns after suspected Valley Station murder-suicide

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - The family of the woman shot and killed in a suspected Saturday morning murder-suicide still has questions about why the killings took place.

Around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, Louisville Metro Police officers were called to respond to the 4500 block of East Pages Lane on a report of a shooting with multiple victims.

According to the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office, Mary Stanton, 49, and her two daughters Adrianna, 17, and Brianna, 11, were found dead from gunshot wounds.

Husband and father Gary Stanton, 60, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Days later, Mary Stanton’s family is still confused how the shooting took place and why it happened.

“It has broken us completely,” Mary Stanton’s sister, Emily Muchemi said. “We have got no words to describe the pain we’re going through.”

Muchemi told WAVE News she learned what happened to her sister shortly after the incident happened. She said she was in her home in Washington, and received a Facebook message from someone asking her to call them.

“I just hung up the phone and just started screaming, I don’t know for how long,” Muchemi said. “I was screaming. Everyone was coming at me and asking me, ‘What’s going on?’ And I kept just saying, ‘They are gone. He’s killed them.’”

Muchemi said her sister’s death was a second blow for their family.

In November, the family traveled to their native Kenya to bury Muchemi and Stanton’s father.

Muchemi said Gary Stanton and the children accompanied their mother on the trip. She said at the time, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Now, a few weeks later, Muchemi’s mother is forced to come stateside to bury her daughter.

“It is very, very painful, that I cannot explain,” Mary Stanton’s mother, Ejidiah Waithaka said. “And if I start showing my children that I’m in pain, I don’t how it will be. So I have to be strong.”

Muchemi described her sister Mary as a leader, the first in their family to emigrate to America. She said Mary became a nurse, and most recently, started a business.

She called Adrianna a dedicated and focused student who had plans for her future.

“It’s devastating to have to tell them that they are gone and we were just with them just a few weeks ago,” Muchemi said. “We just don’t understand. We just do not know what transpired.”

As Muchemi and her family members grapple with their confusion of the case, they’re leaning on faith to help them grieve, overcome and forgive.

“We need to separate the act from him,” Muchemi said. “We don’t know what happened. We don’t know what caused it. He was a good father to the girls.”

Mary Stanton’s family has set up a GoFundMe page, to help acquire the money necessary to bring Stanton’s three brothers from Kenya to the United States for the funeral.

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