Boy faked death to survive ND killings

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Twelve-year-old Christian Schuster survived a deadly shooting in North Dakota by feigning death as he lay under his slain brother’s body, and an 8-year-old sister was spared because she was down the street sledding on a snowy hill, the family’s pastor said.

The Rev. Grant Patterson told The Associated Press that he spoke to the young boy just about an hour after his grandmother and three of his siblings were shot dead Sunday afternoon in their home in New Town, on the Fort Berthold reservation.

Martha Johnson, 64, and three of her grandchildren — Benjamin Schuster, 13, Julia Schuster, 10, and Luke Schuster, 6 — were killed, Mountrail County Sheriff Ken Halvorson said. He described a man who committed suicide hours later as a “person of interest” in the slayings.

Christian Schuster saw the man who entered his home but didn’t recognize him, said Patterson, pastor of the Bethel Lutheran Church in New Town.

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