Serial killer shot dead by police

A man suspected of killing five people and terrorising a South Carolina community has been shot dead by officers called to a burglary, police said today.

Ballistics tests on a gun and bullets found with the man in Gastonia, North Carolina, matched those used in a week-long killing spree in and around Gaffney, 30 miles away,

Authorities named the man as Patrick Burris, a career criminal paroled just two months ago.

Burris, 41, was shot by officers investigating a burglary report at a home 30 miles from where the killings began.

But investigators still have no idea why he started the killing spree on June 27.

The Gaffney killings happened in a 10-mile area over six days. A peach farmer was killed on June 27, an 83-year-old woman and her daughter were found bound and shot four days later, and the next day a man and his teenage daughter were shot in their family’s furniture shop.