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Four dead including gunman following Aurora stand-off Four dead including gunman following Aurora stand-off
(about 3 hours later)
A gunman shot dead three people at a Colorado home before being killed in an exchange of fire with officers, police said Saturday. A gunman killed three people before being shot dead by officers during a hostage-taking incident in Colorado, police said Saturday. The hours-long standoff ended shortly before 9am, when the suspect opened fire on police through a second-story window of a townhouse in which he had barricaded himself, said an Aurora police spokeswoman, Cassidee Carlson. It was not immediately clear if officers entered the building or shot the man through the window.
A police special weapons team was called to a property in Aurora after gunshots were heard at around 3am. It led to a tense stand-off lasting for hours, between authorities and the shooter, who had barricaded himself inside the home. The incident took place just four miles from where 12 people were killed and 58 wounded during a shooting spree at a movie theater last July. All the victims in the latest violent incident to hit Aurora are believed to have been related to the gunman.
The confrontation ended at around 9am after the suspect was shot and killed in a firefight with officers, police sergeant Cassidee Carlson said. At around 3am, police notified neighbors of an emergency situation and evacuated several blocks, Carlson said in a news briefing. One person inside the house had escaped and alerted authorities, she added. It led to a siege lasting some five hours. At 8am, the gunman fired on a police vehicle, leading to an exchange of gunfire, according to local news sources. Police fired tear gas and entered the home, where they found the bodies of three victims as well as that of the gunman. Carlson said the gunman, whose name has not been released, died just before 9am.
Investigators say three victims appeared to have been killed before officers arrived. A fifth person escaped uninjured, but Carlson declined to elaborate. A neighbor, Michael Ignace, 46, said he had spoken to the gunman and "he seemed like a reasonable guy, and we talked about motorcycles". Police entered Ignace's apartment during the night and alerted him, but he chose to stay in his house, he said.
Violence put Aurora in the national spotlight in July, after a gunman's rampage inside a movie theater in the Denver suburb left 12 people dead. Prosecutors will go to court Monday to outline their case against the suspect, James Holmes. The same Denver suburb was rocked by a mass shooting in July. In that incident, a gunman opened fire during a midnight screening of the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises. Police identified former neuroscience graduate student James Holmes. Prosecutors are due to outline the case against Holmes as a court session on Monday.