Four North Dakota Slayings in State that Averages 11 Per Year; At Least Baby Was Found Unharmed

(CBS/AP)  The infant daughter of a 19-year-old woman who was among four people shot to death last week in Minot, North Dakota was found unharmed in her mother's apartment, police said Monday.

Sabrina Zephier was found slain Friday afternoon, but her baby daughter was placed in protective custody, Minot Police Chief Jeff Balentine said.

Investigators have ruled out murder-suicide in the shooting deaths of 19-year-old Sabrina Zephier, her 13-year-old brother, her mother and her mother's boyfriend, Balentine told The Associated Press.

Zephier's mother, 38-year-old Jolene Zephier; brother, Dylan, and Jolene Zephier's 22-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy Longie, were found slain in a Minot mobile home less than an hour after the 19-year-old's body was found in her apartment.

The Zephiers were members of South Dakota's Yankton Sioux Tribe.

Balentine said a "person of interest" has been interviewed in the case but no arrests have been made and investigators have not ruled out the possibility of more than one killer. He would not comment on a potential motive for the slayings that authorities believe are related.

Balentine earlier said the killings were not a case of "a gunman running amok."

The killings have alarmed residents in the town of about 36,000, about 100 miles north of Bismarck.

Minot Mayor Curt Zimbelman said Monday that the killings have resonated in his city, which has had five homicides since 2006 and just one all of last year.

"This definitely sent a shockwave through a community the size of ours, and most any city, I would guess. You just never know when it's your city," he told the AP.

North Dakota has averaged about 11 homicides annually in recent years, the North Dakota Attorney General's office said.

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