Police identify four victims, suspected gunman dead in Duluth

DULUTH – A Duluth man known to struggle with his mental health killed his two sons, his wife and a former partner before shooting himself earlier this week.

The tragedy came to light after Duluth police were called Thursday afternoon to conduct a welfare check at a home in the quiet 6000 block of Tacony Street in the West Duluth neighborhood where Anthony Nephew’s former partner Erin Abramson, 47, lived with their son Jacob Nephew. , 15. Abramson, who worked for the city of Superior, had not shown up for work that day – which was unusual and caused concern among colleagues.

Both were dead from multiple gunshot wounds.

Police turned their attention to Anthony Nephew’s home, less than a mile away, on the 4400 block of West Sixth Street, across from Denfeld High School. They secured the perimeter and dispatched a drone, discovering Nephew’s wife Kathryn “Kat” Ramsland, 45, and their son Oliver Nephew, 7, who had also been shot and killed, Duluth Police Chief Mike Ceynowa said during a somber news conference Friday afternoon. at the city’s Public Safety Building.

Anthony Nephew was also in the house – dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Ceynowa said police are still investigating the timeline by analyzing cell phone data. Nephew’s motives were not definitive, but the police chief said he was known to struggle with his mental health. Ceynowa confirmed that police had responded to calls to the home in the past.

said Anthony Nephew in the 2021 column he wrote for the Duluth News Tribune that it’s time to build better mental health frameworks in this country. Most Americans, he wrote, deny that they have mental health problems.

“Because they have to, because they have to, or because they don’t realize that their spirit is broken, they keep going, suffering one psychological injury after another, trauma after trauma, accumulating interest, until finally the synapses become overloaded . and they have a breakdown,” he wrote.