Pitchfork.com is reporting that former Pyrexia frontman Erick Shute has been arrested for a triple homicide. On the evening of June 13th, Shute allegedly shot three West Virginia men – Jack Douglas, Travis Bartley (24), and Willie Bartley (53) – near Great Cacapon, West Virginia, in what Morgan County Sheriff Vincent Shambaugh told the Journal News “was a property dispute over some firewood, or something of that nature.” A fourth person, who has not been identified, escaped unharmed. Shute then fled the scene before he was apprehended late last night in Chester County, Pennsylvania, according to the Pennsylvania Police Department. 

In a since-deleted Facebook post provided to New Jersey Advance Media, Shute writes that his act “was self defense” and that his victims “stole over $20,000” of his property.

In 2009, Shute encountered controversy in Salem County, New Jersey for hanging an American flag upside down as a “signal of distress” for the country. At the time, he said, “We went to other countries to fight corrupt governments now we face our own from home.” Then in 2011, a New Jersey grand jury indicted him on charges of attacking a police officer and resisting arrest.

Read the complete report here.

Pyrexia has since posted the following message on their official Facebook page.

"As we watch this event unfold , we are shocked and saddened to learn that our former singer Erick has been involved in what seems to be a shooting by his own hands. Although all the details have yet to unravel, and he hasn't been an active member of Pyrexia for some time now , we have been rocked by this horrible news. There's no question the man had obscure views and was an odd and quiet person at times , but you try and accept a persons shortcomings or different viewpoints. No one saw this in him."

Erick Shute sang on two Pyrexia albums, 2007’s Age of the Wicked and 2013’s Feast of Iniquity.