Hoke County authorities are still trying to figure out why a father and mother were shot dead in front of their kids in their yard on Saturday.

Tommy Charles Brown, 35, was playing with his young sons when John Oliver Hill Jr. approached and shot Brown around 7:40 p.m. Saturday, according to Hoke County Sheriff Hubert Peterkin.

After the children ran inside, Peterkin said, the children’s mother, Thalia Rebecca Mook, went out to help. She was shot twice.

By 9 p.m. deputies were at Hill’s doorstep after determining he was their suspect and that he had fled the scene to his house a half-mile up the road. Hill, 48, refused to emerge until a hostage negotiator talked him out of the house after a half hour.

Police obtained a search warrant for the property and recovered several firearms among other evidence.

Hill was charged with Brown’s murder, and is “getting ready to be charged with another count of first-degree murder” in Mook’s death, Peterkin said.

Peterkin said authorities are still investigating, but have yet to find a link between Hill, who lives at 5621 Philppi Church Road in Raeford, and Brown and Mook, who lived at 110 TC Jones Road.

“It appears that there was nothing between these people,” Peterkin said.

“We have not been able to find anything yet.”

Jahner: 919-829-4822