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An 18-year-old gunman shot three people to death and wounded six others, including two police officers, in a northwest New Mexico town on Monday before police shot him dead outside a church a short time later, police said.
The late-morning shooting spree unfolded in a residential area of Farmington, New Mexico, about 180 miles (290 km) northwest of Albuquerque.
Police responded “to find a chaotic scene where a male subject was actively firing upon individuals in that neighborhood,” Baric Crum, deputy chief of operations for the Farmington Police Department, said in a news briefing hours later.
Three civilians were killed, and six other people were wounded, including two officers struck in an exchange of gunfire with the suspect before he was fatally shot by police, according to Farmington police spokesperson Shanice Gonzales.
She told Reuters by telephone that the suspect had stalked about a quarter of a mile on foot firing on bystanders seemingly at random before the rampage came to an end outside the church where he was confronted by law enforcement.
No motive was readily apparent.
“We are still trying to determine why he was in this neighborhood,” Crum told reporters.
