Thursday morning, the bodies of four young people were found inside a car near a former mountain resort in rural Tennessee. The victims had been shot to death, and authorities believe all four were deliberately targeted.

The car was discovered parked on an unpaved road off of one of Renegade Mountain's main streets. A former ski resort and golf club, Renegade Mountain is now home to just 43 residents, mostly young families.

"They knew that nobody lives on that street, and (the car) just looked odd sitting there,” Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess told WATE, adding his department he was using “every asset” to solve the case. "Knock on wood, we've not had any (cases) that (have) gone unsolved," he said. "And we don't want this to be the one that does."

Burgess and other county officials contacted the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, who sent a specialized crime lab from Nashville. The TBI is still working to identify the victims, but a spokeswoman described them as “relatively young” and likely from the surrounding area.

John Moore, the president of the Renegade Mountain Homeowner's Association, told the Associated Press that there's been minor crime near the resort in recent years, including arrests for drugs and break-ins. But there's been nothing like a quadruple murder in the place Moore described as the “the best in the world.”

"I believe it was just somebody doing something that required an isolated place and it just happened, unfortunately, to be our sub-development," Moore said. “There are 10 miles of road on 3,000 acres. It’s easy to get lost or be invisible once you get past the gate.”

[Image via AP]

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