Update: New Hampshire man kills son, 9, then self during YWCA visit

An estranged father shot his 9-year-old son several times during a supervised visit at a New Hampshire YWCA before turning the gun on himself Sunday morning, officials said. Both were killed.

Muni Savyon, 54, of Manchester, N.H., had been separated from the mother of his son, Joshua Savyon, of Amherst, N.H., for several years; the man had previously threatened to kill his son and the boy’s mother as well as himself, state Atty. Gen. Joseph A. Foster said in a statement.

The apparent murder-suicide happened during a one-hour supervised visit at the YWCA center in Manchester while a male supervisor was in the room, officials said. The unidentified supervisor escaped unharmed.

Savyon armed himself with a handgun partway through the visitation, which began at 9:30 a.m., officials said.

Police received the first call at 10:11 a.m. and surrounded the building before a SWAT team entered and found the bodies on the second floor of the YWCA building, which has a center for such supervised visits.

[Updated, 7:31 p.m. Aug. 11: The YWCA USA said its “thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of all those involved in this incident.” In a statement late Sunday, Chief Executive Dara Richardson-Heron said the group helps more than 500,000 domestic violence victims each year, and the tragedy is a reminder of how important those services are.]

Rabbi Levi Krinsky of Chabad Lubavitch in Manchester told the Boston Globe that Savyon’s brother had died five weeks earlier in Israel and that Savyon had sent an email to a friend suggesting “he was going to do something of this nature.”

“He was clearly spaced, his eyes were not focused on me,” Krinsky told the Globe, describing when he last saw Savyon a week ago. “He was just very broken, which I thought was directly related to his brother’s passing. Did I think he was suicidal? No. Did I think he was dangerous? Not in the slightest. Apparently this is what he was thinking. End it all.”

Officials said the state attorney general’s office was leading an investigation into the shooting.

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