US massacre gunman surrenders

A gunman wanted for murdering eight people in a house then firing at a police helicopter surrendered today after a huge manhunt.

The drama began yesterday when a man was spotted barely alive along the side of a narrow country road in Virginia. He died on the way to the hospital.

Police answering the emergency call heard more gunshots, and seven other men and women were found dead at a nearby home.

They surrounded a stretch of woods overnight and as teams tried to flush out the gunman, he fired at a police helicopter and hit a fuel tank, forcing it to land.

This morning 39-year-old Christopher Speight approached officers at the scene of the shootings and turned himself in.

The search had paralysed the rural area near Appomattox, best known as the place where Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865 to end the US Civil War.