Police launch inquiry after man kills 7 in mass shooting

INVESTIGATORS were working to unravel the motive behind a shooting rampage that killed seven people, including three children, and wounded another in a small Ohio town before the gunman died in a gunfight with police.

Police combed through three homes and searched outside a fourth in a wooded, residential area outside Akron, collecting evidence as they tried to piece together what happened during the shootings that shook a quiet neighbourhood.

Authorities did not release the condition of the survivor who was hospitalised, and they were withholding the names and ages of those involved until officers could tell victims’ family members, Copley police sergeant Eric Goodwin said. Autopsies began yesterday.

Neighbours identified some of the victims as Brian Johnson, Autumn Johnson, 17, and Scott Dieter, 11, who had come from Kentucky to visit his aunt Becky Dieter, who is said to be in hospital.

The tragedy began when police say the gunman shot his girlfriend in one home, then ran to a neighbour’s house, where he shot her brother and gunned down four neighbours.

He then chased four people shooting one of them before bursting into a home on a nearby road, where two others had sought refuge.

Police said he shot his eighth victim in that home and left, only to get into a gunfight outside with a police officer and a citizen who had been a police officer. The gunman, whose name was not released, was killed.

A school official said he was told two victims were students at the local high school.

Gilbert Elie, who has lived in the neighbourhood for 11 years, heard the gunshots and cries for help as he got ready for church. Elie, 76, said he went to a house across the street and found the woman who lived there lying in the driveway, her husband shot near the garage, and their granddaughter and another woman shot in the front seat of a vehicle.

A third woman came out of the house next door and tried to talk to Elie, he said, but their exchange ended abruptly when a man followed her out of the house and shot her, sending Elie running for safety behind a truck.