SAMSON, ALA. — First, he killed his mother.
That, according to Alabama officials, was the first chilling act in Michael Kenneth McLendon's trail of carnage across southern Alabama on Tuesday. He killed 10 people, injured six and left a string of small communities wondering what motivated a quiet young man to obliterate the peaceful rhythms of rural Southern life in March.
"He was just friendly with everyone, and kind of stayed to himself," said Jessica Wise, 27, who graduated from high school with McLendon in 1999. "That's why this is such a shock."
But other details emerged Wednesday of a depressed and troubled young man who was obsessed with guns -- and who may have been seeking vengeance, or was possibly frustrated by a romantic relationship.
McLendon, of Coffee County, killed himself at a metal-louver factory in Geneva, where he had previously worked. He was 28.
Last Wednesday, he quit his assembly line job at Kelley Foods of Alabama Inc., a rural meat-packing and food distribution company, said Erik Ennis, the human resources manager.
Lynn Hughes of Coffee County said her sister, who works at the plant, had said that McLendon had complained recently about being teased by co-workers, and may have been having girlfriend trouble.
Many could hardly believe that McLendon was the man responsible for it all. Older residents remembered watching the well-behaved and quiet boy pitch in Little League.
Jerry Hysmith, 35, a co-worker at the louver factory, recalled him as a shy but thoughtful man -- the only one to offer him a ride home when his car died.
Like others in town, Hysmith said McLendon was fond of guns. But he didn't think much of it in an area where hunting talk, like football talk, is a stock male ritual.
"It was nothing where a red flag would go up," Hysmith said. "He never said anything about hurting anyone."
Elsewhere in the county, grief was mixed with a kind of confusing shock. Many here knew both the shooter and the victims.
At a packed service Wednesday night at First Baptist Church of Samson on Main Street, a guest preacher from Birmingham, Steve Sellers, paraphrased from the Book of Matthew: "It rains on the just, and it rains on the unjust."
Early Wednesday, Gary L. McAliley, district attorney for Coffee and Pike counties, said investigators found notes at McLendon's mother's house that might have been lists of "people who had done him wrong." A statement by state investigators later denied that McLendon had left "hit lists."
