PALM BAY, Fla. -- Investigators today searched for clues to what triggered a bloody rampage by a gunman described by a neighbor as 'a time bomb waiting to go off.'
William Bryan Cruse, 60, captured by police and military troops who stormed a teargas-filled supermarket Friday to end his brutal eight-hour siege, was in jail today facing six counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder and other charges including kidnapping.
Described as an angry man with a hankering for guns and a dislike for children, Cruse owns a master's degree in library science and a history of only two minor brushes with the law.
With such sketchy details of his life, the question of why loomed large over the sall Florida coastal town 30 miles south of the Kennedy Space Center.
'We just don't know what happened and we probably won't know for quite a while,' said Police Chief Charles Simmons.
Meanwhile, as the cleanup began, the community honored its fallen heroes and desperately tried to come to grips with the tragedy.
Flags in town flew at half-staff in memory of the two Palm Bay policemen who were gunned down in the melee and law enforcement officers across Florida made plans to march in a police procession at the men's funerals next week.
Social workers counseled police and other residents, particularly employees of shops at the Sable Palm Square shopping center where the massacre took place, and set up a telephone hotline for people traumatized by the horror of the incident.
'People are kind of jumpy,' said Sherri Taylor, a drugstore clerk. 'They're nervous. I know I am. Everybody is watching everybody.'
Said Jimmy Evans, a concrete finisher who was at the shopping center talking on the phone with his wife when the shooting began, 'I'm lucky I'm alive. As he went shooting, my next move went to running.'
The final toll in the shooting spree was six dead and 14 injured, two critically. Two of the dead were Middle East natives who attended nearby colleges.
Some neighbors of Cruse, who moved to Palm Bay two years ago from Kentucky, said it might have been avoided if police had heeded their warnings.
Neighbors said they complained about Cruse's violent temper for months and once circulated a petition seeking police help. They reported seeing Cruse randomly fire guns into the air and threaten children.
'Someone said he was just a time bomb waiting to go off,' said neighbor Dick Burkhart. 'Everyone said don't go down and talk to him because he's wacko.'
The violence actually began Thursday night in Cruse's neighborhood, a mile from the shopping center, where he fired shots at a group of youths and hit one, 14-year-old John Rich, who was in fair condition Friday with a hip wound, police said.
Theodore Bartholomew, another neighbor, said Cruse might have been angry at two other boys who made noise near his house and shot Rich instead.
The bloodbath at the shopping center began in the parking lot when Cruse killed Ron Grogan, 27, and Gerald Johnson, 28, the first two Palm Bay policemen to arrive.
Using a high-powered rifle, Cruse killed the first officer by firing at least eight shots through the windshield. He continued the wild assault, firing more than 40 rounds and leaving the pavement strewn with the dead and wounded before taking refuge in a Winn-Dixie supermarket packed with panicked shoppers.
Simmons said police maintained communications with Cruse, who 'ranged from melancholy to fits of rage.' Later, Simmons called Cruse 'mad.'
After it was determined Cruse did not realize there were people hiding in the store, local SWAT team officers and assault troops from nearby Patrick Air Force Base stormed the building and captured Cruse.
Cruse was taken Friday to the Sharpes Detention Center, 35 miles north of Palm Bay, for a first hearing. He was enclosed in a mesh cage, manacled and chained at the wrists.
At a six-minute hearing in a small courtroom in the Detention Center, Brevard County Judge Harry Stein declared him indigent, appointed a public defender and ordered him held without bail.
Cruse, a history major who graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1951 and later earned a master's degree in library science, said he did not have a lawyer and his assets were limited.
'I had a car. Don't know what happened to it,' Cruse said softly, barely able to be heard at the rear of the small court chamber.
With his only phone call, Cruse called his half-sister, Edna Thompson, of Lexington, Ky. Subsequent calls to her home went unanswered. Cruse's brother, Rudy, also lives in Lexington, Cruse's former home where he was arrested twice -- once for public intoxication and another time for assault when a gun discharged in his home. He paid fines for both convictions.
