As many as seven dead, including gunman, in shooting rampage near Los Angeles6/7/13
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/07/18831196-as-many-as-seven-dead-including-gunman-in-shooting-rampage-near-los-angeles?liteAs many as six people were killed and two to three others injured Friday when a gunman clad in black went on a rampage through Santa Monica, Calif., before being shot to death in the library of a community college, authorities said. Another individual, described as a "person of interest," was in custody, they said.
The shootings took place just three miles away from where President Barack Obama was scheduled to attend a fundraising event. The Secret Service said the incident was believed to be unrelated to the president’s visit.
Police had not yet identified the gunman or established a motive for the bloodshed.
Santa Monica Police Department Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said that investigators were combing as many as three crime scenes as the assailant cut a violent path from a private residence on a suburban block to a library on the campus of Santa Monica College, a two-year school just a short drive away from the Pacific Ocean.
Authorities initially responded shortly before noon to reports of a blaze at a home fewer than 20 blocks away from the campus. Responding officers found two people believed to have been fatally shot by the gunman inside the flame-engulfed structure, Seabrooks said.
The gunman is believed to have moved west toward the college, firing at passing vehicles and leaving as many as three dead. More shots were fired when the gunman attempted to carjack a passing vehicle, law enforcement sources told NBC News.
Marta Fagerstroem, a student at the college, told NBC Los Angeles that she was on a bus that was stopped at a red light when the gunman stepped out from the passenger side of the car and fired five or six shots at the bus.
"This guy just steps out with a big rifle and starts shooting," Fagerstroem told the station. A woman in the back of the bus was bleeding from her head, she said.
Attempting to evade officers, the gunman ran onto the college campus and entered a library, where he shot at multiple people, police said. As students scattered, officers entered the library and shot and killed the gunman, the said.
Dr. Marshall Morgan of the Reagan UCLA Medical Center said in a news conference hours after the shootings that one of three victims -- all women -- brought to the trauma center with gunshot wounds had died. One other was still in surgery and another was listed in serious condition, he said.
Three other patents were brought to UCLA Santa Monica with relatively minor injuries, he said.
The principal suspect has yet to be identified by authorities, Seabrooks said. He is described as a male Caucasian between the ages of 25 and 30. He was dressed head to toe in black and sported what authorities said appeared to be a bullet-proof vest.
Seabrooks said little about the "person of interest" except to say, "We are not convinced 100 percent that the suspect who was killed operated in (a) solo or a lone capacity."
Obama was in Santa Monica for a Democratic National Committee event at a private home at 2 p.m. (5 p.m. ET). A spokesman for the Secret Service said the agency was aware of the incident but said it was being treated as "a local police matter at this point."