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‘Nothing seemed amiss’ with father of slain family

The husband and father of the family killed on an isolated farm house in the NSW Riverina showed no signs of being unhappy, the local parish priest says.

Kim Hunt, 41, her son Fletcher, 10, and daughters Mia and Phoebe, eight and six, were found dead at the Boree Creek Rd property near Lockhart on Tuesday.

Body, gun found in dam near farmhouse

Father Tony Schipp, who led a Mass at the children’s school St Joseph’s on Wednesday morning, said the local community had rallied in the wake of the tragedy.

The Catholic priest has only been at St Mary’s in Lockhart for four months, and said he had never met the 44-year-old father Geoff Hunt.

However, nobody in town had suspected anything was amiss with the local farmer, he said.

“Nobody that I’ve spoken to indicated that they were aware that anything was amiss,” Father Schipp said.

“He was happy. He was making arrangements for events that were coming up, that he was going to be part of. There was no hint or signal of any internal stress factors at all.”

All four are believed to have died after suffering gunshot wounds, although a post mortem is still to be conducted.

Counsellors have been brought in to help children at the school, which has 74 pupils.

The flag at the St Joseph’s flew at half mast on Wednesday, with a quiet sombreness replacing the usual joy of the school day.

When the Hunt children didn’t turn up for school on Tuesday, the alarm was raised by locals.

Like many small rural schools, parents lend a hand, with Mr Hunt rostered on for lawn mowing duties for the first two weeks of September, according to the school’s newsletter.

The Hunt family was well known in Lockhart, which has a population of 900.

 

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