Gunman kills four in Denver-area shooting spree before he is killed by police

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) -A lone gunman shot four people to death and wounded three, including a police officer, on Monday in a Denver-area shooting spree that unfolded at several locations and ended with police killing the suspect, authorities said.

Investigators have yet to determine a motive for the rampage, which began around 5 p.m. when the gunman shot and killed two women and wounded a man near downtown Denver, Police Chief Paul Pazen said a news briefing.

The suspect then fled in a car and fatally shot a man in east Denver’s Cheesman Park neighborhood, before opening fire again in a west Denver community where no one was hit, Pazen said. According to Pazen, the suspect twice exchanged gunfire from his vehicle with Denver officers pursuing him, disabling a police cruiser.

From there, the gunman drove into the neighboring city of Lakewood, where he shot and killed a fourth person inside an unspecified business, according to Lakewood Police spokesman John Romero.

The gunman fled from Lakewood police when they attempted to pull him over and engaged in a running gun battle with officers before fleeing on foot and entering a hotel, where he shot and wounded a clerk, Romero said.

He then shot at police officers again, wounding one of them, before police shot him dead, Romero told reporters. Authorities did not publicly identify the suspect, and said circumstances leading to the shooting remained under investigation.

The conditions of the wounded officer and civilians were not immediately known, Romero said.

Anne Wilson, a shopper who was inside a cellular phone store in Lakewood when gunfire erupted nearby, told a Denver-based NBC-affiliate TV station she heard “seven or eight gunshots, and then like another set of maybe five more.”

Wilson said she and other customers were quickly ushered by store employees into a back room behind security gates until the danger had passed. “It is scary, scary times we live in,” she said.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Shri Navaratnam, Robert Birsel)

Paris police employee stabs four to death in force HQ before being shot dead

By Simon Carraud and Sudip Kar-Gupta

PARIS (Reuters) – A police administrative worker went on a knife rampage inside the force’s headquarters on Thursday, killing four people before being shot dead by an officer, police officials said.

There was no official word on the motive for the attack, which took place in the heart of the French capital near to Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral.

But Jean-Marc Bailleul, a police union leader, described the incident as criminal rather than an act of terror. “It was a moment of madness,” Bailleul told BFM TV.

The area around the police headquarters was sealed off and the nearest metro station was shut for security reasons, the transport authority said.

President Emmanuel Macron is expected to visit the scene later on Thursday.

A police official and member of the collective “Police up in Anger”, which advocates for better conditions for officers, was quoted by franceinfo radio as saying the assailant had experienced issues with his supervisor.

“I know there were tensions between him and his direct supervisor,” Christophe Crepin told franceinfo. “I do not think this is a terrorist act.”

A police spokesman said he had no comment on the incident.

An official at the prosecutor’s anti-terrorism office said that for now, his office was not leading the investigation.

(Writing by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Christian Lowe; Editing by Hugh Lawson)