Phoenix Sniper Slain; Killed Bicyclist, Officer

A sniper barricaded inside a home killed a bicyclist and a police officer and wounded five other people before a police SWAT team stormed the house and killed him, authorities said.

The SWAT team assaulted the house in east-central Phoenix shortly before 5 p.m. No officers were injured during the attack. Witnesses said they heard heavy gunfire and an explosion during the storming of the house.

The attack took place about five hours after the gunman, who was not identified, opened fire on a quiet residential street.

The gunman used at least two high-powered weapons in a brief burst of gunfire that began just before noon, police spokesman Kevin Robinson said.

Police officers used an armored truck and a cement truck for cover when they retrieved the body of the woman bicyclist from the street across from the house in which the sniper was holed up, a witness said.

Two city police officers who responded to reports of the gunfire were wounded, police said. One of the officers was hit in the head and chest and died several hours later at a hospital, officials said.

The other officer was in stable condition with a gunshot wound in the right thigh. Four other people were hospitalized with injuries ranging from glass cuts to serious trauma, the spokesman said.

Officers and firefighters cordoned off streets for a half mile around the single-story ranch house, which is in an older middle-class residential neighborhood of east-central Phoenix.

Arizona Public Service cut off electrical power to the house in an effort to force the gunman out.

Police officers escorted children away from two elementary schools within a quarter mile of the house at the end of the school day.