Gunman in Seattle protest

A man exits a vehicle with a gun as a man is tended to by medics after being shot by a driver who tried to drive through a protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Seattle, Washington, U.S. on Sunday. Protests persists in several major cities around the USA and the world calling for the end to racial inequality.

-reuters-

Gunman takes hostages in Greenhills mall, 1 hurt: mayor

MANILA --  A gunman took hostages at a popular shopping mall in Greenhills, San Juan on Monday, its mayor said.

One person was shot and was being treated at the hospital, said San Juan Mayor Francis Zamora.

The suspect, a "disgruntled" security guard, was believed to be carrying firearms and a grenade, he said.

Police evacuated the V-Mall, popular among bargain-hunters looking for cell phones and toys, after receiving reports of gunshots in the area.

"We are currently negotiating with this person," Zamora told ANC.

A police vehicle and several spectators were seen huddled at the V-Mall entrance, according to an ABS-CBN photographer on the scene.

Some doors to the mall were sealed off as authorities started evacuating the building, according to the photographer.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Suspected gunman barricaded in Los Angeles grocery store

LOS ANGELES, California - A suspected gunman being pursued by police reportedly fired shots and went into a Trader Joe's store in Los Angeles on Saturday (Sunday, Manila time), where he barricaded himself in and may have taken hostages, local media reported.

The suspect's car crashed next to the store and he opened fire on the officers chasing him, before entering the premises as shoppers ran for cover, the Los Angeles Times said.

Aerial footage from local TV stations NBC Los Angeles and CBS Los Angeles showed people leaving a store window using a rope ladder and police carrying children to safety through a parking lot in the city's Silver Lake neighborhood.

A woman inside the store was shot but able to get out, NBC Los Angeles reported, saying there may be dozens of people still inside the store in safe locations.

The suspect has been shot and is talking with police negotiators, NBC Los Angeles said.

Prior to the standoff at the grocery store, the suspect allegedly shot his grandmother and girlfriend before fleeing in his car, CBS Los Angeles reported citing a police source.

Los Angeles police said there was a pursuit with a suspect who emerged from a vehicle at the store. They would not comment on whether shots were fired or if any hostages had been taken.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'Like hell': Groom-to-be recalls Resorts World Manila attack

MANILA- “It was like hell.”

This was how groom-to-be Roscoe Fernandez described his and his siblings’ experience during the attack at the Resorts World Manila in Pasay City.

Fernandez was staying at a hotel in the area since he was supposed to get married Friday.

He said he and his siblings came from the casino at the 2nd floor and were on their way back to their room when they met running men.

“There was a commotion na but little did we know meron nang ano, a guy who was wearing a bonnet, a Kevlar vest. I couldn’t determine what kind of rifle the guy was using,” he said.

“I saw him exactly. We were a few meters away from the gunman,” he added.

Fernandez said he did not see anyone accompanying the gunman. The suspect was also only firing upwards and was not shooting anyone, but still caused panic.

“Wala ako nakita na kasama pero he was ano discriminately firing upwards eh but he wasn't shooting anyone so nataranta kami so we went to the fire exits,” Fernandez said.

Police already ruled out terrorism as a motive for the attack while Resorts World Manila has dispelled rumors that there was more than one gunman.

Fernandez said he did not see any security guard going after the gunman and was not aware where the guards were.


Out of fear, Fernandez ran to the fire exit and went straight to the basement where he hid for more than an hour.

Resorts World Manila on Friday said there were 35 fatalities from the attack. Of this figure, 13 were employees of the casino while 22 others were guests. Authorities later raised the toll to 38 dead.

Stephen Reilly, chief operating officer of the casino, also confirmed that a member of the casino’s security team shot and wounded the gunman.

 The suspect, who also torched casino tables, hid in a hotel room where he committed suicide.-- report from Doris Bigornia, ABS-CBN News

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Student charged with killing one, wounding three at Arizona university

PHOENIX - An 18-year-old student killed a classmate and wounded three other students when he opened fire during a confrontation on the campus of Northern Arizona University early on Friday, in the latest shooting to hit a U.S. school, authorities said.

The suspected gunman, Steven Jones, a freshman at the state university in northern Arizona, was taken into custody following the shooting, campus Police Chief Gregory Fowler said.

Jones was charged with first-degree murder and three counts of aggravated assault and was ordered held on $2 million bond at a brief court appearance.

Fowler said Jones pulled the handgun in a confrontation with several students.

The university identified the student who was killed as Colin Brough. Brough was from Annapolis, Maryland, according to an online article by the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis.

The three injured students, identified as Nicholas Prato, Kyle Zientek and Nicholas Piring, suffered multiple gunshot wounds and were being treated at Flagstaff Medical Center, Fowler said. Their conditions were not disclosed.

The shooting occurred just hours before President Barack Obama was scheduled to visit Roseburg, Oregon, to meet privately with families of the nine people killed in a mass shooting at a community college there last week.

Northern Arizona University, with a student body of about 20,000, is located in the mountain city of Flagstaff, about 140 miles north of Phoenix, and about 80 miles south of the Grand Canyon.

A university spokeswoman said Friday's incident occurred in a parking lot next to a residence hall for Greek organizations - fraternities and sororities - around 1:20 a.m.

"We don't know the facts yet about what brought them together, or what caused the confrontation," Fowler said.

Delta Chi International Fraternity executive director Justin Sherman said the four victims were members of the fraternity but the alleged gunman was not.

Jones, who did not try to flee, was arrested by university police and was cooperating with authorities, Fowler said. He said guns are not allowed to be carried on campus.

Classes continued on Friday, university president Rita Cheng told a news conference, calling the incident isolated.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and U.S. Senator John McCain, both Republicans, extended thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families.

Obama reacted to the killings in Oregon by vowing to step up efforts to curb U.S. gun violence. Gun rights advocates said the Oregon shootings underscored the importance of the right of Americans to bear arms and defend themselves.

Just hours after the Arizona shooting, police said one person was killed and another wounded in a shooting at an apartment complex near the campus of Texas Southern University in Houston, and a suspect had been taken into custody.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

US college shooter had arsenal of weapons

ROSEBURG, United States - The 26-year-old behind America's latest mass shooting at a college in rural Oregon appears to have been a gun enthusiast who hoarded an arsenal of weapons and was obsessed with religion.

Though authorities have yet to formally name him, the gunman behind the murder of nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg has been widely identified as Chris Harper Mercer.

As a portrait of the shooter -- who died in the carnage -- began emerging on Friday, officials said they had recovered 13 weapons belonging to him, including six at the school.

Celinez Nunez, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told a press conference that a flak jacket with steel plates and five magazines were also found laying next to a rifle at the school.

Authorities said they were still trying to determine what prompted the killings. Several reports said Mercer, who apparently had no ties to the college, may have been seeking notoriety.

"He appears to be an angry young man who was very filled with hate," the New York Times quoted an unnamed law enforcement official as saying.

Another official said Mercer, who lived with his mother, was obsessed with guns and religion and had leanings toward white supremacy.

Witnesses said he demanded to know his victims' religion before gunning them down.

"They would stand up and he said 'Good, because you're a Christian, you're going to see God in just about one second'," Stacy Boylan told CNN, relaying his daughter Ana's account. She survived by playing dead.

 Hate-filled writings
CNN quoted investigators as saying that during the shooting rampage, Mercer handed hate-filled writings to a survivor that spoke of his frustration at not having a girlfriend and at being a virgin. He also reportedly left behind a box.

Derrick McClendon, a former neighbor of Mercer when he lived in California, said the young man was very withdrawn and ill at ease.

"I would say, 'Hey, man, you all right?'" McClendon told the New York Times. "He would say 'hi,' but that's it. He was really shy".

Mercer's neighbors in Oregon described him as a withdrawn, anxious man who wore the same outfit every day -- combat boots, green army pants and a white T-shirt.

"He was not a friendly type of guy," said Bronte Hart.

"He did not want anything to do with anyone."

The rampage Thursday in the close-knit rural community prompted an impassioned new plea for gun control by President Barack Obama who said Americans had become "numb" to the horror of mass shootings.

Obama on Friday warned that unless gun safety measures are adopted, such killings would go on.

"Let's not forget this is happening every single day in forgotten neighborhoods around the country," he told reporters. "Every single day, kids are just running for their lives trying to get to school."

In answer to those who argue that mental illness lies at the root of America's mass shooting epidemic, Obama said the key was to limit access to guns for the tiny minority of mentally ill people who turn violent.

"The only thing we can do is make sure that they can't have an entire arsenal when something snaps in them," he said.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also added his voice to calls for action to curb gun violence saying it was taking an "appalling toll" on American society.

 'It's my son's birthday'

In Roseburg, a close-knit community, stories of heroism began to emerge Friday, among them that of army veteran Chris Mintz who was seriously injured after charging the gunman.

Mintz, who was studying at Umpqua to become a fitness trainer, threw himself against the classroom door to prevent Mercer from entering, his family said.

The gunman managed to blast his way in, shooting Mintz in the back, abdomen, hand and legs.

"He gets shot three times, hits the floor, looks up at the gunman and says 'it's my son's birthday' and gets shot two more times," Mintz's aunt told a CNN affiliate. She said her nephew too was expected recover.

Local residents voiced dismay to see their town of some 20,000 residents gain notoriety as the site of America's latest mass killing.

"There is a sense of pride about our community and to think that we're getting national recognition because someone shot people," Dean Remick, 62, a retired Umpqua theatre professor, told AFP.

School shootings are a disturbing reality of American life and many facilities have reinforced security in recent years, especially in the wake of the Sandy Hook, Connecticut massacre in 2012 that left 20 students and six adults dead.

There have been 142 school shootings in the United States since that tragedy, according to data compiled by Mass Shooting Tracker.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Two New York police officers killed, gunman dead: media

NEW YORK - A gunman fatally shot two New York police officers as they sat in their squad car on Saturday and then killed himself, in what may have been a revenge attack over police treatment of minorities, U.S. media said.

The police deaths in Brooklyn followed weeks of protests in New York and other parts of the United States after separate cases in which grand juries declined to charge two white police officers involved in the deaths of two unarmed black men.

Quoting a law enforcement source, NBC's New York affiliate reported that the gunman may have been seeking retribution against police after posting a threatening message on a social media account.

The New York Times said the slain officers had been patrolling in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant section of the borough. NYPD Deputy Chief Kim Royster said it appeared the shots struck them in the upper body, the Times reported.

It said the gunman opened fire on the officers from the patrol car's passenger side and fled into a nearby subway station. The man then died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Royster told the newspaper.

A police spokesman could not confirm the newspaper account, but he said the officers had been taken to Brooklyn's Woodhull Medical Center and their conditions were unknown.

The spokesman identified the shooter as a 28-year-old man and said he had been taken to Brooklyn Hospital Center. A weapon has been recovered, he said.

New York police have come under intense pressure in recent weeks, with protests erupting after a grand jury declined to charge an officer involved in the chokehold death of Eric Garner during an arrest attempt in the borough of Staten Island.

Mike Isaac, a neighborhood resident, told CNN that Saturday's shooting took place in a largely African-American neighborhood that and had been tense since the protests over Garner's death. "The mood is pretty freaked out," he said.

Police set up a perimeter for several blocks around the street corner where the shooting occured. Only residents were allowed to cross the police line and the subway line where the gunman reportedly shot himself was shut down.

"I just feel sorry for the policemen that got killed," said neighborhood resident Olin Barton, a 78-year-old retiree.

"I don't think there's a relationship with Garner, I doubt so anyway. It must have been someone mentally ill."

The grand jury's decision this month on the officer involved in Garner's death followed widespread demonstrations in the United States over a grand jury decision last month not to indict a police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, a teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.

The protests have continued sporadically - on Saturday demonstrators against police violence shut down part of the Mall of America in Minnesota on Saturday, one of the nation's largest shopping centers, a community group said.[ID: nL1N0U40O1]

The Times said the last fatal shooting of a New York City police officer was in 2011.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported last month that 76 law enforcement officers in the United States died last year while on duty, including 27 during criminal acts, a sharp drop from 2012.

CONDEMNATIONS OF SHOOTINGS

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a New York civil rights leader who has supported the families of Brown and Garner, said he was outraged by the officers' killings, if they were related to the deaths of Garner and Brown.

"Any use of the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, in connection with any violence or killing of police, is reprehensible and against the pursuit of justice in both cases," he said in a statement.

In Los Angeles, Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson and other civil rights leaders also condemned the shootings in a statement.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson, Sebastien Malo and Jonathan Allen; editing by G Crosse, Gunna Dickson and Frances Kerry)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Officer fatally shot near Texas A&M was serving eviction notice

COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- A county constable was serving an eviction order when he was killed Monday, prompting a shootout in which the suspected gunman and an unidentified man also died, according to local police.

A police officer and a 55-year-old woman were shot and wounded, and two other police officers also suffered non-life-threatening injuries while responding to reports of the initial shooting, according to College Station Assistant Police Chief Scott McCollum.

He was shot by officers who responded to a 911 call of shots fired at a home in a leafy neighborhood near the Texas A&M University campus shortly after noon, McCollum said at a late afternoon press conference.

The gunman was identified as Thomas Caffall, 35, according to College Station Police spokeswoman Officer Rhonda Seaton.

The gunfire prompted Texas A&M to issue a Code Maroon warning on its website just before 12:30 p.m., stating that an "active shooter’’ was in the area and warning students and others to stay away.

Brazos County constable Bryan Bachmann was shot by a 35-year-old man at the home, McCollum said. He refused to describe the gunman’s weapon, whether he owned or rented the home, or whether he said anything at the time of the shooting.

McCollum said police "took fire from the suspect’’ and fired back, "neutralizing the threat.’’

He added: "They took cover and defended themselves.’’

The other officer who was shot was treated for a leg wound, said Seaton.

She said one injured officer was treated at the scene and another at a local hospital. Neither had been shot, Seaton said.

Seaton declined to provide information about the circumstances in which a 65-year-old man was shot dead at the scene. She said only that he was shot by the gunman.

The wounded woman was undergoing surgery for at least one bullet wound and was listed in critical but stable condition, she said. No other information about her was released.

Seaton said she believed the gunman was renting the home, and police were seeking information from the home's owners.

Officers blocked streets surrounding the home on Fidelity Street in College Station's historic Southside neighborhood and cordoned off several areas with yellow police tape. Officers were investigating "multiple scenes,’’ McCollum said.

"We have a lot of information coming in, a lot of witnesses to secure," he said.

George Clemenceau, 20, said he was at a nearby house when shots rang out just after noon. He said he could hear the whizzing as bullets passed overhead.

Clemenceau said he saw an older man lying on his back, dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans and work boots. The man appeared to have been shot in the back, he said.

He thought: "That was someone like me that was just out on the street.’’

source: latimes.com

Finland gunman kills two students

HELSINKI -- Police arrested Saturday an 18-year-old man in camouflage fatigues suspected of killing two students in a shooting targeting restaurants packed with teenagers in southern Finland.

The gunman opened fire around 1:53 am (2253 GMT) from a rooftop in Hyvinkaa, a city about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Helsinki, aiming at two restaurants where many young people had gathered outside, police said.

The motives for the attack were not yet clear.

Finland has in recent years been hit by several cases of deadly shootings by teenagers, and President Sauli Niinisto said the killing sprees showed that "something has broken in society".

An 18-year-old woman was killed on the spot in Saturday's attack while an 19-year-old man later died from his injuries. Both were students at a local technical college.

Another seven people were hurt including a 23-year-old police officer who was wounded as she left her vehicle after arriving at the scene, a police spokesman said.

"Shooting erupted suddenly," Jani Kuronen, a man in his 20s, told public television YLE. "People starting running. One person had a horrible wound on the face. I called an ambulance."

Another witness, Santeri Silvenoinen, said he heard the gunshots and "then looking around me, I saw a woman lying on the ground and I started running."

Police did not identify the suspect, but said he was dressed in camouflage fatigues. He was arrested near Hyvinkaa, a city of 45,000 people, without putting up any resistance.

Three firearms including a hunting rife were seized from the suspect, who was not in possession of any gun permits, police said, adding that he had no criminal record.

Asked about the gunman's motives, police spokesman Satu Koivo said an investigation was ongoing, adding: "For the moment, it is not possible to confirm anything."

The spokesman told AFP however that police did not believe that the gunman knew his victims.

Hyvinkaa mayor Raimo Lahti told YLE that the whole town was in shock.

On September 23, 2008, a student who went on a murderous rampage at a school in Kauhajoki in the southwest killed 10 people before turning his gun on himself.

In a similar incident on November 7, 2007 at Jokela, not far from Hyvinkaa, an 18-year-old killed seven classmates and the headmistress then shot himself in the head.

source: interaksyon.com