Missouri man wounds girlfriend, kills her teen daughter

GLASGOW VILLAGE, Mo. (AP) - A St. Louis area man has been charged with wounding his girlfriend and fatally shooting her 17-year-old daughter before fleeing the scene with two young children.

Forty-one-year-old Gino Branch, of St. Louis, is jailed on $1 million cash only bond on charges of second-degree murder, armed criminal action, first-degree domestic assault, tampering with evidence and two counts of child endangerment. It wasn't immediately known whether he had an attorney.

Charging documents say Branch threw spent shell casings in the trash after shooting the mother of his children and her daughter in an apartment in an unincorporated part of north St. Louis County called Glasgow Village.

The documents say he then told two 6-year-old children who were in the apartment to put on their coats and get in his car. He tossed the firearm used in the shooting in a dumpster in Valley Park, Missouri, and drove to a convenience store in Troy, Illinois, where he said he had killed two people, the documents say.

St. Louis County police said in a news release that officers responded to the apartment around 8:30 a.m. Sunday and found the teen dead. Her mother was taken to a hospital for 'Å“the continuation of life-saving treatment."