Five people have been killed and one injured in shootings in and around an Arizona city, before a 73-year-old gunman apparently took his own life, police have said.
Media reports suggested the man, named by police as Carey Hal Dyess, was unhappy because of a divorce, and that one of the victims was a family lawyer killed in an office in downtown Yuma, near the US state\'s border with Mexico.
The Yuma Sun newspaper cited David Rodriguez of the Wellton Police Department as saying the first shooting was reported at about 5:00 am when a woman was shot four times in the face.
"When we got on scene she was alert and breathing," Rodriguez said, adding: "She was friends with the ex-wife," he added, saying the slayings were the result of a divorce gone bad, according to the paper.
A second shooting was reported at 9:00 am when the body of another woman was found, followed 20 minutes later by the downtown office shooting.
A Yuma police department statement, describing the shooting in downtown Yuma, said: "An elderly male suspect entered a business and shot and killed an adult male."
Two others were shot and killed in the Yuma County area, but details were not immediately available, officials said. At one point police ordered a lockdown of local schools and a court building, as they scrambled to find who was responsible.
"As the investigation continued, the shootings within Yuma County and City appeared to be linked," it said, adding that Dyess was found near a local highway "with what appears to be a have been a self-inflicted gunshot wound."
Investigations were continuing to piece together the exact sequence and nature of events, said the police statement.
© Copyright AFP Agence France-Presse GmbH - All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or distributed. All reproduction or redistribution is expressly forbidden without the prior written agreement of AFP.
KATALOG FIRM W INTERNECIE
