Indian among five killed in US shooting

Indian among five killed in US shooting
ASSOCIATED PRESS

McKEES ROCKS (USA), APRIL 29: A white man shot dead five people, including an Indian, and criticially injured another Indian in a racially motivated shooting spree in several suburban Pittsburgh communities, the police said here. The man was apprehended and charged.

The shootings took place within a 32-km range through suburbs surrounding Pittsburgh during about an hour span yesterday afternoon.

The gunman fatally shot a person of Indian descent at an Indian grocery store, two employees at a Chinese restaurant and a black man at a martial arts school. A Jewish woman who lived next door to the suspect's parents was found dead in her home.

Police received first word of the shootings shortly before 2 pm, when a small fire set in a back bedroom of a home triggered an alarm that alerted officers. When they responded, they found Anita Gordon, 63, shot twice inside her house.

While they were at the Gordons' house, police got a call of shots being fired at Beth El Congregations, a synagogue less than a mile away where Gordon was a member. The synagogue's glass doors were shot out, the word `Jew' was painted on the front and swastika were painted on its outside walls.

Police then received reports of two Indian men being shot at an Indian grocery store in Carnegie. A 30-year-old man was killed and a 25-year-old man was wounded.

The suspect, Richard Baumhammers, 34, smirked at onlookers as he was led into a magistrate's office in Beaver Falls yesterday night wearing a bulletproof vest.

The shooting spree was the second of its kind in the region since March, when a black man allegedly yelled racial epithets and killed three white men.

Kent Kretzler, who owns a travel agency next to the grocery, said he saw Baumhammers walk out of the store wearing a sport coat and tucking his gun into his holster or waistband. He calmly walked 40 yards to his car, he said.

"He got in and sat for maybe five or ten seconds without doing anything, and just very calm and collectedly pulled out as if pulling out after buying a bag of groceries," he said.

"There was nothing there to make you think he had done anything wrong," he added.