Saturday afternoon, thousands of people watched as the Clarion-Ledger filmed an interview with a suspect who allegedly shot and killed eight people, one of them a Lincoln County deputy.

The other seven victims were reported to be his family members, one of them was his wife’s child.

According to reports, his wife escaped alive while he continued shooting at two other homes in the neighborhood.

All of this occurred over a period of at least seven hours.

Handcuffed on the side of the road, bleeding from his right arm, the man spoke to the reporter and shared his thoughts about what he had done.

He told the reporter “I ain’t fit to live, not after what I done.”

The man said the officer was shot because he tried to intervene in the family dispute. He told the reporter he was “sorry.”

A “sorry” man confessed to killing eight people over several hours. A “sorry” man said it was his intention to have God kill him, but he ran out of bullets.

The investigation into this incident is ongoing, so law enforcement doesn’t have a true grasp of this man’s motive.

Cases like these stir many “what if?” questions. “What if no one called the police? What if they called police sooner? ”

No one can answer those questions. No one can know what would have happened if the deputy didn’t knock on that door.

Other deputies will continue to intervene when someone needs help; they will continue to do the same thing, knowing it puts their life in danger.

That is why we have organizations and groups like Saving Police Lives that raise money to provide law enforcement with extra protection so they are safer when they must intervene for the public’s safety.