How a Tragedy Unfolded: Inside the Facebook Posts of Christy Sheats, the Texas Mom Who Fatally Shot Her Two Daughters

Christy Sheats posted numerous times about her love for her daughters as well as in support of the Second Amendment

Photo: Source: Christy Byrd Sheats/Facebook

The Facebook page of the Texas woman who fatally shot her two daughters before being shot and killed by police herself lends eerie retrospective insight given her proclamations of love for her children and her views on guns.

Christy Sheats, 42, called a family meeting and opened fire on her daughters in her living room, according to a press release from the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office. Taylor, 22, and Madison, 17, along with Christy’s husband, Jason, ran out of the house through the front door. Madison collapsed and died, but the mother followed Taylor into the street and shot her again.

A witness confirms to PEOPLE that Sheats went back into the home and reloaded her gun before coming out to shoot Taylor again. Jason escaped the shooting.

Taylor was airlifted to the hospital where she died from her injuries.

The Texas mom had posted several times on her Facebook page to support the Second Amendment and oppose gun control.

“It would be horribly tragic if my ability to protect myself or my family were to be taken away, but that’s exactly what Democrats are determined to do by banning semi-automatic handguns,” she wrote in a March Facebook post.

In January, she posted a meme that read, “I have 10 guns. Obama wants 8 of my guns. How many guns do I have? That’s right, I have 10 guns.”

Sheats also used her social media page as an outlet to celebrate her two daughters.

In September, Sheats posted a sweet kind message to her children: “Happy Daughter’s Day to my two amazing, sweet, kind, beautiful, intelligent girls,” she wrote with photos of Taylor and Madison. “I love and treasure you both more than you could ever possibly know.”

Taylor had kind words to say about her mother in a May 2013 Facebook post on Mother’s Day.

“You’re one of the strongest people I know, if not the strongest, and you have had to overcome so much in your life but you still manage to love us and put your everything into being a mom,” Taylor said in the post, sharing a photo of her younger self smiling with her mom.

Authorities say Sheats had a history of mental illness, and the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office had been to her home “for previous altercations” involving Sheats’s “mental crisis,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Caitilin Espinosa tells PEOPLE.