This undated photo provided by the Lawrence County Ohio Sheriff's Office shows Aaron Lawson. Multiple people were found fatally shot and another person was discovered stabbed and critically wounded at a pair of residences in southeast Ohio. Officials were hunting Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017, for Lawson, whom they called a "person of interest" in the attacks. (Lawrence County Ohio Sheriff's Office via AP)

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A 7-year-old boy was shot dead and his body apparently hidden in a home where three adults were found fatally shot and a fourth was stabbed, a sheriff said Thursday as a manhunt for the suspect focused on a wooded area near Ohio's southern tip.

Authorities had issued a missing-child alert after the slayings and spent hours searching for Devin Holston only to find the child dead Thursday at the same house trailer where the bodies were found.

The suspect, 23-year-old Arron Lawson, is being sought on warrants for charges including aggravated murder, Lawrence County Sheriff Jeffery Lawless said.

Deputies spotted Lawson around 12:30 a.m. Thursday in a blue truck in Ironton, about 15 miles (24 kilometres) south of where the victims were found, but they lost him after a brief chase when he crashed into a ditch and ran into the woods, Lawless said.

Lawless told the Ironton Tribune that all those involved were somehow related.

Three adults were found dead in a house trailer in an unincorporated area further north on Wednesday evening, and a fourth adult who came upon the scene after work was stabbed there and fled to seek help, the sheriff said. The wounded person was later flown to a hospital in Huntington, West Virginia.

None of the dead adults or injured victim has been identified. The sheriff's office said releasing further information would compromise the investigation.

Agents from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, including crime-scene and cybe-unit investigators, are assisting Lawrence County with the case, said Jill Del Greco, a spokeswoman for BCI and the state attorney general's office.

Lawless said schools in the Rock Hill district were closed Thursday because of the attacks.

The initial report about the slayings — violence against multiple people found at properties of related residents — recalled details from a still-unsolved homicide case that rattled rural southern Ohio last year. But investigators have no indication of a connection between the cases, Del Greco said.

The deaths on Wednesday occurred roughly 40 miles (64 kilometres) southeast of the Piketon area, where eight people from the Rhoden family were found shot to death in four homes in April 2016.

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Associated Press writer Mark Gillispie in Cleveland contributed to this report.

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Find Kantele Franko on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kantele10 and her work at http://bit.ly/2qEaebN .

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This story has been corrected to show the sheriff now says the boy was 7, not 8.

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This story has been corrected to show the sheriff now says the spelling of the suspect's first name is Arron, not Aaron.

News from © The Associated Press, 2017