Man walking down the street in Colorado Springs shoots three people to death
A man marching down the street shot and killed three people Saturday, before being fatally shot in a gun battle with police, authorities and witnesses said.
Officers were responding to a report of shots being fired when they spotted a person matching the description of the suspect they were trying to find, Colorado Springs police Lt. Catherine Buckley said. The person opened fire, and police fired back, she said.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene as the gunman went down the street with a rifle.
Matt Abshire, 21, told the Colorado Springs Gazette he looked outside his apartment window and saw a man shoot someone with a rifle. He said he ran to the street and followed the man and called police.
The man suddenly turned and fired more shots, hitting two women, Abshire said. Their names and conditions were not available.
It was unclear how many people were wounded in the rampage.
Alisha Jaynes told KKTV-TV 11 News she was at an ATM when she saw a man with a gun walking calmly down the street.
“They yelled, ‘Put the gun down,’ and he turned around, and that’s when they shot at him a good 20 times,” she said. “There was a lot of gunfire.”
Buckley said the crime scene covered several major downtown streets, which were shut down most of the day while investigators tried to figure out what happened.
Buckley said the investigation of the police shooting has been turned over to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. There were at least three crime scenes, sheriff’s spokeswoman Jacqueline Kirby said.
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