SANTA MONICA, California: A gunman dressed in black killed four people in a string of shootings through the seaside California town of Santa Monica before he was shot dead by police in a community college library, police said.
Five other people were wounded, one of them critically. As the gunman lay dead on a sidewalk outside the Santa Monica College library, a second individual was taken into custody near the campus and described by police as a “person of interest” in the case. He was later released.
Police initially said six people were killed by the gunman, who was described only as a man between the ages of 25 and 30.
The killing spree marked the latest in string of high-profile mass shootings over the past year, including a December attack in Connecticut that killed 20 children and six adults at an elementary school and a shooting last July at a suburban Denver movie theater that killed 12 people.
Those attacks have helped reignite a national debate over gun violence in America that spurred Obama and his fellow Democrats to push for expanded background checks for gun buyers — an initiative defeated in the US Senate.
Santa Monica Police said the carnage began at a home east of the college, where the gunman shot two people dead before apparently torching the home. According to media reports, the first two victims were believed to be the gunman’s father and brother.
“I was in my apartment when I heard five to seven shots, then a pause, then two shots and I knew it was guns,” neighbor Janet Carter told Reuters.
Santa Monica Police Sergeant Richard Lewis said that after leaving the home, the gunman carjacked a woman and ordered her to drive. Along the way he fired at least several rounds at a city bus, wounding three people.
Arriving at the college, the gunman opened fire on a red sport utility vehicle in a staff parking lot, killing the driver and critically wounding his passenger, Lewis said.
The gunman, who was armed with an AR-15 style rifle and at least one handgun, then shot and killed another person at the college before he died in an exchange of gunfire with police, Lewis said.
