The killing of six members of an extended family Sunday at a birthday party at a mobile home in Colorado Springs appears to be the fourth deadliest mass shooting in state history and tied for the deadliest mass murder in the city’s history.

The killings happened just after midnight Sunday at the Canterbury Mobile Home Park on Preakness Way off Powers Boulevard, near the airport on the city’s east side. The suspected gunman also died.

The incident was Colorado’s worst mass shooting since a gunman killed 10 people at a Boulder supermarket March 22. The killings appear to be the deadliest gun-slaying in Colorado Springs history, and are tied for the deadliest mass murder in Colorado Springs history, said Colorado Springs Police Department historian Dwight Haverkorn.

Colorado Springs mass shooting location

The Sunday scene was deadlier than mass killings Colorado Springs has mourned in recent years. In 2015, a man shot three people to death at random before dying in a shootout with police in Colorado Springs on Halloween. Less than a month later, a man killed three people, including a police officer, and injured nine others in a shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in the city.

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Powerful images from the scene of the shooting

In 2007, a man opened fire on the Youth With a Mission Center in Arvada, killing two and injuring two before escaping. Later that day, he made a similar attack on New Life Church in Colorado Springs, killing two and wounding three before shooting himself.

Until Sunday, Colorado Springs’ deadliest gun slaying appears to have occurred May 17, 1986, when five people were gunned down execution-style during two business robberies, according to Haverkorn. The alleged murderer killed himself when confronted by police the next day.

Sunday’s event appear to tie with a Sept. 20, 1911, mass murder of six neighbors from two houses — all killed with axes — for the deadliest mass murder in Colorado Springs history. The murderer was never identified.

Statewide, Colorado’s deadliest shooting remains the Columbine High School massacre of 1999, in which two armed teens went on a shooting spree, killing 12 students and one teacher, and wounding more than 20 others. The gunmen then killed themselves.

The state’s second deadliest shooting occurred at an Aurora movie theater in 2012, when an armed gunman opened fire at a midnight showing of “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises,” killing 12 and wounding 70.

The March 22 attack at a south Boulder King Soopers remains the state’s third deadliest mass shooting, with 10 dead, including a police officer. The suspect awaits trial.

Friday’s birthday party massacre becomes the state’s fourth deadliest mass shooting, with six dead, in addition to the alleged gunman, whom police say killed himself.

Colorado was tied for fourth in the nation with Washington for the U.S. state with the greatest number of mass shootings between 1982 and April 2021, according to Statista.com. California came in first, with 21; Florida second, with 12; and Texas third, with 11.

Colorado is fairly middle of the road when it comes to firearm mortality by state. In 2019 it ranked 19th in the nation, with 14.2 firearm-related deaths per 100,000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In 2018 the state ranked 33rd in the nation for firearm homicides per 100,000 individuals, with 2.31, around half of the national average of 4.12, according to a 2021 report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, citing data from the global burden of diseases study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.