Three dead in US day spa shooting

Emergency vehicles stage across the street from Azana Salon after a shooting in Brookfield, Wis. Sunday , Oct. 21, 2012. Deputies searched Sunday for a shooter after multiple people were wounded when someone opened fire at a spa near a suburban Milwaukee shopping mall. AP/Tom Lynn

CHICAGO—Three people were killed and four others injured after a gunman burst into a day spa in the midwestern US state of Wisconsin and opened fire Sunday, police said.

The man also left behind what appears to be an improvised explosive device, which has prevented police from searching the entire two-story building in Brookfield, a suburb of Milwaukee, police chief Daniel Tushaus told reporters.

“Our entire operation is focused on locating the suspect,” Tushaus said, describing the situation as “fluid.”

“We are currently still searching a portion of the salon.”

Tushaus provided few details on the motives of 45-year-old suspect Radcliffe Haughton, but local media reported that he was in the midst of an ugly divorce from his wife, who worked at the Azana spa.

The woman had gotten a judge to issue an order of protection banning Haughton from contacting her and ordering him to hand in his guns, TMJ4 News reported.

The station said police had surrounded his home in the nearby suburb of Brown Deer.

The four other victims are not believed to be critically hurt. However, one woman who was shot in the neck may be around six months pregnant, the station reported.

Television footage showed more than a dozen emergency vehicles in the parking lot of a shopping mall across the street from the spa, at least part of which has been evacuated. Tactical police teams were also on the scene.

The hospital treating the victims was on lockdown until the shooter is caught, a spokeswoman said.

The White House said President Barack Obama had been briefed about the incident, adding:

“The president and first lady’s thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this horrible shooting and their families.”

“As we wait for further details from the shooting today in Brookfield, Tonette and I send our thoughts and prayers to the victims,” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said in a statement.

“Senseless acts of violence leave us with heavy hearts and many questions. Our state will stand with the victims and their families, and we will provide them with the law enforcement and community support they need to heal in the coming days.”

Witness Christopher Pfeiffer said he was on his way to a bookstore in the mall when he saw a young, barefoot woman running in the parking lot.

“She was screaming, yelling, crying hysterical. She was pleading for help,” Pfeiffer, 47, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“She kept saying, ‘My mother was shot.’ And she mentioned that there was a gunman. She ran into the bookstore and I followed her. But I watched her from afar.”

David Gosh said he was on his way home from duck hunting when he saw a woman run out into the road screaming and pounding on cars for help.

Then he saw a large man with a handgun chase after her, but luckily the police arrived with sirens blaring. Gosh said he saw the man run back into the building or possibly into the woods nearby.

“He was looking for an escape route,” Gosh told the paper.

Gosh’s father, John, said he saw two wounded women taken out of the spa. One appeared to have been shot in the leg and the other in the back, he told the newspaper.

The Journal Sentinel published a photo on its website of two barefoot women in white spa robes standing in the spa’s parking lot near a fire truck and ambulance. Two women standing nearby were clutching their heads and waving their hands as they spoke together.

Just down the road, less than a mile away, is the Sheraton Hotel where seven people were killed and four more wounded at a shooting in 2005. The shooter, who opened fire on a Living Church of God service held at the hotel, then committed suicide.