The circumstances of the killings — the bodies were found less than 1 mile apart, in a part of Sumner County about 50 miles northeast of Nashville — largely remained a mystery, and a motive remained unclear.
Authorities said the man, Michael Cummins, 25, was taken into custody Saturday night after a search that lasted hours. He was found in a creek bed and cornered by more than a dozen officers about 1 mile from one of the killing scenes, officials said.
They said Cummins was shot in the leg by one of the officers. They did not provide any further details about the encounter, or about what information led them to seek him in connection with the killings.
Cummins’ wound was not believed to be life-threatening, and he was taken to a hospital, where he remained as of Sunday afternoon.
Authorities said they knew Cummins was related to at least some of the victims. Their names had not been released as of Sunday night.
“It is up in the air as far as his relation to everybody,” said Ray Whitley, Sumner County district attorney general, on Sunday. “No way to know for sure.”
Scant details were offered about the killings themselves, even as the body count grew Sunday.
Authorities received the first report of a possible crime Saturday, and found four bodies at a home on Charles Brown Road near Westmoreland, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a statement. Another person was found there with a critical injury and was taken to the hospital, officials said.
Police then found the body of a woman at a home on Luby Brown Road. And as investigators processed the first crime scene on Charles Brown Road on Sunday, they found two more bodies.
One of the seven people killed was a 12-year-old girl, Whitley said. The sexes of the remaining five were not publicly released. Officials said Sunday they were still trying to identify them.
“We think they all occurred yesterday,” Whitley said Sunday about the killings. “That’s what I think. The bodies haven’t even been moved yet, so everything is suggested.”
Referring to the woman found dead at Luby Brown Road, Whitley said that Cummins “went to her house and stole her car — before he did that, we assume he killed her.”
Whitley said officials had not recovered a weapon. “I think everybody assumed that it was shooting, but that might be a false assumption,” he said without elaborating.
He also said investigators had not yet interviewed Cummins, who was scheduled to undergo surgery before being formally charged.
He said Cummins had a criminal record, but it contained nothing of a violent nature. He declined to be more specific.
“We’ve never had this many deceased people in a criminal case before,” said Whitley, who has been district attorney general for 30 years. “It’s pretty shocking to everybody.”
Asked if officials expected to find more bodies, he said: “I hope not.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.