FOX: Detectives tried to piece together Wednesday why 11 people died in rural Alabama in a bloody, cross-county rampage that ended when the killer took his own life.

Investigators declined to comment on a motive for the shootings carried out by Michael McLendon, who lived with his mother and used to work at a local metal plant.

Samson Mayor Clay King said he had known McLendon all his life and could not say what sparked the massacre. The gunman's exact age wasn't released, but some authorities estimated he was in his late 20s.

"If you would have asked me two days ago if he was capable of this, I would have said certainly not," King said on NBC's "Today" early Wednesday.

The bloodshed, which spread across two counties, began when McLendon burned down the house he lived in with his mother in Kinston, Ala. Authorities found Lisa McLendon's body inside, but haven't confirmed how she died or whether she was a victim of her son's killing spree. Some media reported that she was shot before he set fire to the house.

McLendon then drove a dozen miles southeast to Samson, in Geneva County, where he gunned down nine victims, including four members of his family.

The rampage ended another 12 miles farther east in Geneva at the metals plant where the shooter worked until 2003. After a gun battle with police, McLendon killed himself.

The massacre left four other people injured, including a baby girl. The victims haven't been identified, but at least four were relatives.

"He cleaned his family out," Coffee County Coroner Robert Preachers said. "We don't know what triggered it."

Shocked, grieving residents hoped the answers weren't lost when the gunman committed suicide.

"Apparently something just snapped," said Wynnton Melton, mayor of Geneva, Ala., where McLendon ended his spree in a shootout with local police and then killed himself.

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