How do I work with death of same object types?

So I am making an open world type of space shooter game. The issue I am having is when I destroy an enemy ship all enemy ships die with it. I have tried using the object in a family but I am confused on how to reference them so only the one I shoot gets destroyed. What am I missing?

Its hard to say without seeing your code logic for determining how an enemy ship is destroyed.

The ship has to be singled out in some way, whether its on a Collison check with a missile and health is below 1.

Or check all healths of enemy ships like; enemy ship health < 1, for each enemy ship, destroy enemy ship.