WASHINGTON/PIKETON: Eight members of one family, including a teenager, were shot dead in rural Ohio, just before gunmen killed six people in Georgia.

In Ohio, seven bodies were found at three houses close to each other, including a mother in bed with her 4-day-old baby nearby. An eighth was later found at a separate site, Sheriff Charles Reader told reporters.

All victims were shot in the head, authorities said, and it appeared some were killed as they slept. The 4-day-old and two other small children were not hurt.

Authorities urged residents to be cautious in this part of rural southern Ohio as the search continued on Saturday. The victims were “all adults except for a male juvenile” who was 16 years old, he said, and all members of a single family.

Two babies, one aged four days, the other six months, and a three-year-old child survived the shootings, he added. The authorities gave no possible motive. And, with at least one suspected gunman still on the loose, no arrests have been made.

“Each one of the victims appears to have been executed, each one of the victims appears to have been shot in the head,” Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said.

“The preliminary determination has been made that none of the individuals committed suicide,” he added, saying the shooter or shooters “are still at large. We do not know their location.”

Several victims were in bed when they were shot, Reader said.The first and fourth crime scenes are separated by 50 km, the sheriff’s office said.

Earlier, DeWine and Reader said in a joint statement that the first seven victims had been found “in three Union Hill Road homes in Pike County,” a rural community about 80 miles east of Cincinnati.

There was no “active shooter,” they said. Firearms kill around 30,000 people in the US each year.

Schools in Pike County and surrounding areas were earlier placed on lockdown as a precautionary measure, local media reported.

Agents from the Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation were leading the investigation, the statement said.

Ohio Governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich tweeted that the situation was “beyond comprehension.”

Meanwhile, six people were found dead in northern Georgia, in two separate incidents believed to be a domestic dispute, Columbia county sheriff’s officials said, according to television reports.

Local coroner Vernon Collins said five people were dead in two shootings that are possibly connected, the report added.

Investigators interviewed more than 30 people hoping to find leads in the deaths of the seven adults and 16-year-old boy whose bodies were found Friday in homes southwest of Piketon.

Authorities didn’t release the victims’ names but said they’re members of the Rhoden family. Investigators said none of the deaths appeared self-inflicted, so they believe at least one assailant is at large.

A motive for the slayings isn’t known, authorities said, but they urged surviving members of the Rhoden family to take precautions. Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader also recommended area residents to be extra wary.

“This really is a question of public safety, and particularly for any of the Rhoden family,” Attorney General Mike DeWine said.

Reader said Friday night that authorities had met with more than 100 relatives and friends of the Rhoden family at a church.

DeWine dismissed a report that the people authorities questioned included a person of interest.

The first three homes where bodies were found are within a couple miles on a sparsely populated stretch of road, while the eighth body, that of a man, was found in a house father away.

Authorities didn’t release any information on what kind or how many weapons might have been used or whether anything was missing from the homes.

Goldie Hilderbran said she lives about a mile from where she has been told a shooting took place — news she received from a mail carrier who told her deputies had an area blocked off.

“She just told me she knew something really bad has happened,” Hilderbran said.

Gov. John Kasich, campaigning in Connecticut for his Republican presidential bid, said his office was monitoring the situation in Pike County and the search for the killer or killers.

“But we’ll find them, we’ll catch them and they’ll be brought to justice,” he said.