CLINTON, Mo. — The family of Sandra and Zachary Sutton say that their long nightmare is finally over thanks to police and the community.
It started on April 30, when Sandra Sutton escaped from the Sedalia home of her ex-boyfriend James Horn Jr., who police say kidnapped Sutton and kept her captive in a box. But three weeks later, Horn tracked Sutton and her 17-year-old son Zachary down at a home in Clinton, Missouri—shooting and killing them both in the early morning hours of May 21.
On Saturday, law enforcement finally caught up with Horn, killing him in a rural Pettis County home when he threatened them with a gun as they tried to apprehend him.
“That is a blessing for us, it is a blessing for us,” said Sandra Sutton’s mother, Karen Sutton. “I am getting tied of hiding my self because, frightened to death, of my own self, my family.”
Karen Sutton says that her family has been living in fear since the end of April when her daughter escaped. Their murder last Thursday shook the family to its core.
“I was shaking, I shook and I cried, because a frightening man out there,” said Karen Sutton, who had been living under police protection for two days since her daughter and grandson’s murder.
Karen Sutton credits the community for what she says is her family’s freedom from fear.
“That when everyone works together it can be solved,” she says.
