The police chief of Farmington, New Mexico says it appears an 18-year-old man who shot and killed three people and wounded six others fired at random as he roamed the neighborhood. The man was killed Monday morning within minutes of officers responding to reports of shots fired. A Farmington police officer was wounded, treated at a hospital and released. A state police officer also was wounded and remains hospitalized in stable condition. Police Chief Steve Hebbe says it appears the man fired at least three weapons, including an “AR-style rifle,” as he roamed a quarter-mile through the a neighborhood, randomly shooting at homes and cars. Police are still trying to discover a motive. Hebbe called it “one of the most horrific and difficult days that Farmington has ever had as a community.”
An 18-year-old man armed with at least three guns roamed through a northwestern New Mexico community firing randomly at cars and houses Monday, killing three people and injuring six others including two police officers before he was killed, authorities said.
The shootings occurred around 11 a.m. in Farmington, a city of about 50,000 people near the Four Corners — where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet — that is a supply line and bedroom community to the region’s oil and natural gas industry.
Officers responding to reports of shots being fired encountered the attacker within minutes and killed him with at least one shot, Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe said in a video released Monday night. He said the gunman fired at least three weapons, including an “AR-style rifle.”
The shooting was “honestly one of the most horrific and difficult days that Farmington has ever had as a community,” he said.
The identities of the gunman and the victims weren’t immediately released.
Investigators were still struggling to determine a motive for the attack, including talking to the shooter’s family.
“But at this point it appears to be purely random, that there was no schools, no churches and no individuals targeted,” Hebbe said. “During the course of the event, the suspect roamed throughout the neighborhood up to a quarter of a mile. At least six houses and three cars were shot in the course of the event, as the suspect randomly fired at whatever entered his head to shoot at.”
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement that she was praying for the families of the victims and that the incident “serves at yet another reminder of how gun violence destroys lives in our state and our country every single day.
