CHICAGO — A man suspected of randomly opening fire in a Michigan town, killing at least three people in a restaurant and two at a car dealership, was arrested Sunday, US police said.
Three other people were wounded in the shooting rampage in the town of Kalamazoo, before the suspect was apprehended at 12:40 am on Sunday (0540 GMT), police said.
“We believe we have our suspect in custody,” Lieutenant Dave Hines told a press conference.
A local TV station, 24 Hours News 8, said the fatalities included an eight year-old child killed at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, and a father and son shot dead at a Kia car dealership.
Hines said that there were three shootings in total, including one outside an apartment complex.
Three people were confirmed killed at the restaurant and two confirmed killed at the car dealership, Hines said, adding that at least three others were wounded.
The gunman’s motives were as yet unclear, police said.
The suspect was described as a white male in his late 50s driving a blue Chevy HHR station wagon.
Kalamazoo County Undersheriff Paul Matyas initially told local media that six people had been killed in the rampage.
“In summary, what it looks like is we have somebody driving around, finding people and shooting them dead in their tracks,” Matyas told 24 Hours News 8.
The Kalamazoo shootings follow a pattern of mass shootings in the United States that include the December 2 massacre in San Bernardino, California that left 14 people dead and 22 wounded, and the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre in which 20 children and six adults were shot dead.
Gun violence kills about 30,000 Americans every year and mass shootings — rare in most countries — have been on the rise in the United States.
According to the tracking website gunviolencearchive.org, there were 330 mass shootings in the United States in 2015, up from 281 in 2014. They affected nearly every part of the country, reaching into both big cities and small towns.
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