Police say they're searching an upstate New York village after exchanging fire with a man suspected of killing four people and wounding two others.
State police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico says SWAT teams and other officers were fired on from an abandoned building in Herkimer early Wednesday afternoon while looking for 64-year-old Kurt Myers.
Police say Myers' rampage started with a fire in his apartment in the nearby village of Mohawk at about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. They say he then used a shotgun shot to shoot four people, two fatally, at a barbershop around the corner before killing two more at a Herkimer oil change and car wash business.
About 1:30 p.m., a flurry of gunfire was heard near where police had narrowed their search.
The two villages are about 65 miles east of Syracuse, on opposite sides of the Mohawk River in a region known as the Mohawk Valley.
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James Baron, the 29-year-old mayor of Mohawk, said he doesn't know Meyers but knew several of the people who were shot, including "at least" two of the barbershop victims. The mayor described his village as close-knit and friendly, "the kind of place where you'd say, 'Oh, it would never happen here.'"
Herkimer County Community College and local schools were on lockdown. The college sent an automated cellphone alert around 10:40 a.m., telling students and staff that there was an "active shooter" in the area. The message identified the gunman as a man in his 60s, with a white beard and driving a red Jeep Cherokee. A text alert a few minutes later said the campus was on lockdown. Another alert advised people to remain inside buildings until further notice.
Copyright AP - Associated Press
