A man whose nephew is accused of killing seven people including his own relatives has said he wishes he could take justice into his own hands.
Brian Cummins is trying to process how his family found themselves at the center of Tennessee's deadliest homicide event in at least two decades.
His nephew Michael Cummins, 25, was arrested on Saturday night after police found eight victims at two crime scenes in the small town of Westmoreland.
Among the seven dead were Michael's parents, David and Clara Cummins, his uncle Charlie Hosale and a 12-year-old girl.
The sole survivor was the accused killer's grandmother, who is now fighting for her life in the hospital after a brutal beating.
'It's hard to realize about what he did,' Brian, David's brother, told WSMV.
'I love him to death, but when he killed my brother and them, I wish I would've killed him that night.'
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Brian Cummins, whose nephew Michael Cummins is accused of killing six family members in Westmoreland, Tennessee, has said he wishes he had taken justice into his own hands after the bodies were discovered on Saturday. Brian said of the 25-year-old suspect: 'I love him to death, but when he killed my brother and them, I wish I would've killed him that night'
According to court documents, Brian saw Michael on Saturday evening wearing a white t-shirt stained with blood.
The suspect allegedly claimed that the stains were chocolate.
'I said no it ain't. I said that's dry blood,' Brian said.
Michael Cummins, 25, was arrested Saturday after police found eight victims at two crime scenes in the small town of Westmoreland. Among the seven dead were Michael's parents, his uncle and a 12-year-old girl
Later that night the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation captured Michael in a creek bed about a mile from one of the murder scenes.
He has not been charged in the murders but is being held in police custody without bond for a probation violation stemming from an incident in September 2017 in which he set a neighbor's house on fire.
Michael was sentenced to 10 years in prison but placed on 10 years of probation last summer by a Sumner County judge after he pleaded guilty to attempted aggravated arson and aggravated assault in the attack at a home in the 1100 block of Charles Brown Road.
At the time of his arrest Cummins allegedly told police: 'If I get out of jail, I'll go there and do it again. When I get out, I'll finish the job.'
News4 spoke with the judge who presided over the case, giving him the light sentence of probation and ordered a mental health evaluation.
'I don't regret endorsing what was in front of me by two very good attorneys,' Sumner County Judge Dee David Gay said.
Brian Cummins disagreed, saying: 'He should've been in a mental hospital and maybe stayed there for the rest of his life.'
Clara Cummins, 44, and David Cummins, 51, (left and right) were among the seven victims allegedly murdered by their son Michael in Westmoreland, Tennessee
The alleged shooter's uncle, Charlie Hosale, and a woman believed to be his partner, Rachel McGlothlin-Pee, were also killed during the violent rampage across two homes in Sumner County, police say. Hosale and McGlothlin-Pee are pictured together in a Facebook photo
Rachel McGlothlin-Pee's 12-year-old daughter Sapphire (left) was also killed along with Rachel's mom Marsha Elizabeth Nuckols, 64 (right)
Michael's heartbroken sister Crystal Cummins spoke exclusively to DailyMail.com on Monday and said she believes her brother is responsible for the killings.
The 22-year-old's voice was thick with anguish as she said: 'It's obvious that he had to have done it. He was the only person who was there who didn't die besides my granny.'
Crystal admitted that she knows very little about the shootings that have shattered her family and the small community she grew up in.
'I lost everyone and they won't tell me anything,' she said of investigators.
Despite the lack of information, Crystal said: 'Truly in my heart I believe he had something to do with it.
'I can't imagine my brother doing that to his own family. He had to have.'
