Man kills six before turning gun on himself

A MAN armed with an assault rifle shot six people dead, wounded 14 and then turned the gun on himself in a morning rampage on a street in the Slovak capital Bratislava.

“A man in his 50s shot six people dead and eventually killed himself after the police cornered him as he tried to escape the crime scene,” police commander Jaroslav Spisiak told reporters at the scene.

The shooting spree started after 8am GMT in an apartment on a housing estate in Devinska Nova Ves, an otherwise quiet north-western district of the city.

“The police received an emergency call on a shooting in a flat. The first police officers arrived as the gunman was leaving the house,” where he had killed four women and a man, Spisiak said.

Police declined to speculate on a motive for one of the worst such incidents in the country’s history, but said the dead were all probably of the same family.

Marta Vozbranukova, a teacher from a kindergarten close to the scene, told AFP she had seen “an older man carrying an automatic gun walking towards a prefab house”.

“After a while, an injured man of Roma origin, whose family lives in the house, ran out and fell on the ground where the gunman shot him two or three more times,” Vozbranukova said.

Spisiak said the gunman then started to shoot “at everything that moved”.

“More officers came, surrounded him, and he had no choice but to commit suicide,” he added.

The SME daily quoted an unnamed source saying the gunman had been a former soldier.

It also ran a picture taken by a witness from a balcony, showing a grey-haired man wearing a denim jacket and ear muffs, carrying an assault rifle and looking at the top storeys of the house.

“We will not comment on the gunman for now. He was about 50 years old. He was using an assault rifle, model 58, and two handguns,” Spisiak said.

“He had eight full assault rifle magazines and several full handgun magazines,” he added.

According to specialist websites the SA Vz.58 assault rifle magazine contains 30 rounds of ammunition.

As he ran away from the house the man fired at random, wounding at least 14 people, including a three-year-old child, who were taken to hospital, emergency services spokeswoman Dominika Sulkova said.

While the child’s life was not in danger, “three people suffered serious injuries”, Sulkova said. Others on the scene were slightly hurt by flying glass.

Interior Minister Daniel Lipsic told reporters a policeman had been hit in the head and was in hospital in a stable condition.

“One of the injured is in a life-threatening condition, others are not in danger, but this is preliminary information,” Lipsic said.

He added the police were still investigating the identity of the gunman and his victims. “Our prayers are with the families of the victims and injured,” said the minister.