A lone gunman opened
fire inside a crowded movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, on Thursday
evening, killing two people and wounding seven before taking his own life,
police said.
Gunfire erupted during a 7
p.m. CDT (0000 GMT) showing of the film "Trainwreck". Two people died
in the hail of bullets before the 58-year-old suspect killed himself with a
handgun as officers rushed to the scene, Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft said.
The shootings took place
almost three years to the day after 12 people were killed at a cinema in
Aurora, Colorado, and follows several mass shootings in the United States in
recent weeks.
Authorities said seven people
were wounded, three of them critically. One person underwent surgery and
"was not doing well," Craft said.
Police said they knew the
gunman's identity but were not releasing his name during the early stage of the
investigation. They offered no immediate motive and did not disclose any clues
they might have found.
"The shooter is deceased.
We may never know," Craft said, adding that the man had criminal history
that he described as "pretty old."
Police were collecting
evidence from the theater and interviewing witnesses early on Friday after
completing an inspection of the building and the suspect's car for possible
explosives, said Sgt. Brooks David of the Louisiana State Police.
Investigators also headed to
the gunman's home and would speak to his family and friends, Craft said.
None of the victims, who were
described as ranging in age from teens to early 60s, were immediately
identified by authorities.
Witnesses said the gunman
abruptly stood up in the darkness of the Grand 16 Theater about 20 minutes into
the movie and began shooting.
"He wasn't saying
anything. I didn't hear anybody screaming either," Katie Domingue, who was
watching the film with her fiance, told the local Advertiser newspaper.
The bullets sent people
scrambling from the theater, situated on a main thoroughfare in Lafayette, a
city of about 120,000 people roughly 55 miles (90 km) southwest of Baton Rouge,
police said.
President Barack Obama, who is
traveling to Kenya on Friday, received a briefing about the shooting during a
refueling stop in Germany, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
"The thoughts and prayers
of everyone at the White House, including the President and First Lady, are
with the community of Lafayette, Louisiana, especially the families of those
who were killed," a statement said.
Republican Louisiana Governor
Bobby Jindal went to Lafayette to meet law enforcement and victims.
"This is an awful night
for Lafayette. This is an awful night for Louisiana. This is an awful night for
the United States,” he said.
Jindal said that two of the
wounded victims were teachers, one of whom told him that she survived the
attack because her friend rolled over her as bullets rang out. That teacher
then managed to pull a fire alarm in the theater, he said.
The shooting came three years
after a gunman opened fire at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a
midnight screening of the Batman film, "The Dark Knight Rises",
killing 12 people and wounding 70 others.
James Holmes, a former
neuroscience graduate student at the University of Colorado, was convicted last
week on 165 counts of murder, attempted murder and explosives in the July 20,
2012, rampage.
Jurors in that case were
trying to determine if Holmes should face the death penalty or life in prison.
The United States has
witnessed several mass shootings in the last two months.
A gunman is accused of a
racially motivated shooting at a black church in South Carolina that killed
nine church members in June. More recently, a gunman attacked military offices
in Tennessee last week, killing five U.S. servicemen.
Jindal, who last month
announced his candidacy for president, said he had ordered National Guard
members at offices and other facilities to be armed in the wake of the
Tennessee attack.
Obama’s half-sister Auma was among the first people to
greet President Obama as he walked off Air Force One at
Jobo Kenyatta International Airport on Friday evening, local time.
When Obama first visited Kenya
in 1988, Auma picked him up at the airport in a sputtering baby-blue Volkswagen
Beetle that was missing a muffler. Tonight, it was a much different scene as
the president treated Auma to a ride in the presidential motorcade on his
fourth visit to Kenya.
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46800140/GettyImages-475972252.0.jpg){kind=link}