Police: Man turned gun on himself after killing two women
GEORGETOWN — Williamson County officials recently agreed to bear the cost of cremating the remains of a man accused of killing two women before turning the gun on himself in Hutto earlier this year.
Williamson County Commissioners Court members approved the expenditure during a recent meeting.
The agenda item to cremate the remains of 60-year-old Kerry Carter, who died in Hutto on Feb. 27, secured unanimous approval.
Hutto police previously disclosed that Carter died of gunshot wounds inside a Hutto residence, along with Deffenia Lynch, 58, and Iosha Shaw, 41.
According to police Carter fatally shot Lynch and Shaw before shooting himself.
People magazine reported that Lynch and Shaw were mother and daughter.
The county takes responsibility for dispensing remains when the person is indigent or no one else comes forward to take on the cost of a burial or cremation, as is the case with Carter.
The grisly incident rocked the community of Hutto, a city of some 40,000 inhabitants rarely visited by such violence.
“Incidents like this are extremely rare for Hutto,” Police Chief Jeffrey Yarbrough confirmed shortly after the triple shooting. “But when they do happen, we come together to support one another and help those impacted through these difficult times.”
The agenda item authorizing cremation was briskly approved without discussion. Precinct 3 Commissioner Valerie Covey approved the motion during the June 3 session, with Precinct 1 Commissioner Terry Cook seconding before the full court unanimously OK’d the measure.
A document attached to the agenda item did not specify the cost of cremation to be undertaken at Beck Funeral Home and Cremation Services.
It’s not the first time the county has agreed to bear cremation costs of someone who died in a situation involving suspected foul play.
Last year, commissioners voted to pay for the cremation of Ensel Maclare-Urgelles, 48, who died at a Williamson County hospital May 27, 2024.
Police responded to a domestic disturbance at a north Austin apartment complex where they found Maclare-Urgelles “...on top of a female as the suspect was actively stabbing her with a knife,” according to a press release.
An officer shot Maclare-Urgelles, who died of his injuries at a Williamson County hospital.
Under other circumstances involving indigent remembrances, former Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell, in one of his last acts in office, championed the idea of disbursing the ashes of unclaimed bodies at a Georgetown “scatter garden” and affixing their names on a wall plaque.
“I just feel like if we can scatter the remains at a consistent location and then do a simple act of putting their name on a wall, I think that’s important,” Gravell said at the time.
He stepped down from his post in March to take a job as the Region 6 advocate for the Small Business Administration in the Office of Advocacy.
As part of an interlocal agreement with Georgetown, the county will pay the city $50 for each plaque installed into the scatter garden wall to memorialize the dead.
