Phoenix shooting leaves 5 people dead
A gunman killed four people and two dogs at a Phoenix residential complex on Saturday before shooting himself, according to police.
Just after 9 a.m., Phoenix Police Department officers responded to a report of gunfire at a townhouse in a central Phoenix housing complex, said police spokesman Sgt. Tommy Thompson.
Police interviewed neighbors and narrowed down the two likely town homes where the gunman could be hiding, Thompson told the Los Angeles Times.
SWAT crews, a terrorism liaison unit and multiple police officers arrived to assist.
After a neighbor told police that the gunman had entered one of the two possible town homes, police entered the other one, hoping to evacuate everyone inside.
Instead, police found carnage: two people shot dead on the patio, and two more dead inside. Two dogs were also found killed.
Inside the neighboring unit, police found a man who they believe was the gunman, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The entire search process took “several hours,” Thompson said, because police “were determined to locate the shooter.”
Police have not yet released the identities of the victims or suspected gunman. On Saturday night, detectives were working to notify the next of kin and piece together a possible motive for the killings, Thompson said.
“That’s the tragedy of this incident,” Thompson said. “You have five individuals whose lives are gone, and we may never know why.”
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