DURHAM -- Brinton Marcell Millsap apparently shot three women and himself Friday night because of a rumor he had been exposed to a sexually transmitted disease.

"He did think that was the case, but it was a lie," said Anita D. Baker, the mother of one of the slain women, Alexandria J. Baker Pierce.

Pierce, 23, a rising senior at UNC Greensboro, made an impromptu trip to Durham on Friday to tell Millsap in person that the report that she had given him a disease was not true, Baker said. She left Greensboro in her green Honda Accord about 9 p.m. and picked up her friends, Amesha Alia Page-Smith, 24, and Adrianne Celeste Stevens, 22, both of Durham.

All three would later lie dead inside the car along a vacant stretch of N.C. 54 in Research Triangle Park. Durham County Sheriff Worth Hill said Millsap fatally shot the three women then shot himself once. The car and bodies were discovered just after midnight Saturday.

The four had known one another since middle school, but Millsap, 23, was not part of the women's regular circle, friends and family said.

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