Tragic, just tragic

Appears from the latest reports that the double shooting in Colorado of the Australian twins was a suicide pact.

Twin tells police shooting was suicide pact

THE Australian woman who survived a mysterious double shooting at a Colorado firing range won't tell US police why she and her twin sister made a suicide pact.

The Victorian women, Candace and Kristin Hermeler, shot themselves at the Family Shooting Centre south of Denver three days ago after renting pistols and buying ammunition from the firing range management. One died at the scene.

More details have emerged today about the 29-year-old sisters from an American cousin, who said they each had double university degrees and their parents had emigrated from South Africa to Melbourne in the 1970s, The Australian reported.

The surviving twin, who is in a serious condition in hospital after brain surgery, told police from her bed during a two-hour interview that the identical twins had made a suicide pact.

“She told us they planned to commit suicide together and did in fact shoot themselves,” Arapahoe County sheriff's Captain Louie Perea said.

But the investigators left the hospital not knowing why the twins, visiting the US from Victoria, would hatch such a plan.

“We asked that question, obviously more than once, and she didn't want to answer that question,” Captain Perea said.

“We do not know why they did it.

“But, we do know they were in the Denver area for five weeks and one of them went to the shooting range approximately two weeks ago and took some shooting lessons and then about a week ago they went to the same shooting range and took some more lessons.

“Obviously they went back to the shooting range on November 15 and shot themselves.”

The names of the twins will not be released until sheriffs match their identities with fingerprints taken by US immigration officers when the women first entered the US.

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More here

[update] more here too [/update]