After killing the woman at her house, Davison shot and killed the young girl and her male relative aged 43 on the road outside, before claiming the lives of a man and woman nearby, Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer told reporters.
Another two local residents received “significant” but not life-threatening gunshot wounds, he said.
Local and national leaders expressed shock and grief.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted: “My thoughts are with the friends and family of those who lost their lives and with all those affected by the tragic incident in Plymouth last night.“I thank the emergency services for their response.”
A single gun was recovered from the scene after Davison shot himself, but the police chief was unable to confirm witness accounts that it was a pump-action shotgun. He did confirm that as of 2020, Davison held a firearms licence.
Britain has some of the Western world’s toughest gun controls and police are not routinely armed.Private ownership of handguns was outlawed in nearly all cases after a school massacre in the Scottish town of Dunblane in 1996, which claimed the lives of 16 young pupils and their teacher in Britain’s worst mass shooting to date.
But ownership of sporting rifles and shotguns is allowed, subject to strict licensing rules.
Licences last five years, and are meant to be granted only after thorough police background checks, including for mental illness.
Britain’s last mass shooting was in June 2010, when taxi driver Derrick Bird killed 12 people in Cumbria, northwest England.
Davison’s social media channels indicated an interest in guns, right-wing libertarian politics and “shoot-em-up” video games.
The content suggested a self-pitying loner, alienated from his family and hostile to women.
On Facebook, Davison said he was originally from the US city of Phoenix, Arizona, but that was not substantiated in local accounts.
He listed his employer in Plymouth as Babcock International, a UK engineering services company active in the city’s naval docks.
He was reportedly a trainee crane operator in the docks, after working as a scaffolder in his late teens.
YouTube deleted his own content on Friday morning. Before being taken down, it mostly showed him lifting weights in his home gym.
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In one message to camera, in a strong English west-country accent, he ranted about women in misogynistic terms. In the last upload, on July 28, he spoke of feeling “beaten down and defeated” by life.
The last external video he “liked” on YouTube, this week, was of a series of shots fired from a World War II US rifle.
Sawyer defended the police response, insisting that armed response units were quickly at the scene, but too late to engage with Davison before he killed himself.
“We believe we have an incident that is domestically related that has spilled over into the streets,” said Sawyer, adding that police were examining Davison’s social media activity, hard drives, and home life.
The chief constable said he could not confirm whether Davison’s firearms licence covered the weapon used on Thursday.
An “independent review” would look into how he obtained the licence, and whether the gunman had any mental health issues.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Shootings in Devon city leave 6 dead
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