COLORADO SPRINGS, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Four are dead, three victims and the gunman, after a shooting spree that frightened a city and shut down ten blocks in Colorado Springs.
On Saturday morning, at 8:45 a.m. local time, police responded to a report of shots fired. Officers encountered the suspect outside a Wendy's and, after being fired upon, shot and killed the gunman. The spree was ended, but not before the gunman claimed the lives of three others.
As of Saturday afternoon, police were still declining to release the names of the shooter and the victims. A number of downtown streets remained closed for much of the day as police investigated.
Police didn't offer many details on the sequence of events but acknowledged that two separate shootings occurred within a half-mile radius leading up to the police-gunman shootout. The first shooting left one man dead, with a second killing two women. Police also said a fire was found inside a house at one of the shooting locations.
One witness, Matt Abshire, told reporters he saw the initial shooting and called police before following the gunman on foot.
"I looked out my kitchen window and I saw a man in a green jacket firing an AR-15...waited a few seconds, went out my house, looked to my left and saw a man down the street, probably 50 feet. I started calling him and I called the cops," Abshire told The Colorado Springs Gazette.
Abshire witnessed the gunman shoot the two women as he tailed him. Abshire's roommate Ryan White woke to the gunfire and came outside to find Abshire with blood on his hands, having tried to help one of the two women.
A number of witnesses watched in horror as police and the gunman exchanged fire in broad daylight.
"They yelled, 'Put the gun down,' and he turned around, and that's when they shot at him a good 20 times," witness Aaron Nicks told KKTV. "There was a lot of gunfire. He was running across the street right here and they pretty much shot him down."
"What I saw was he kind of, like, spun around and [police] yelled, 'Drop it,' and he kind of went to aim and that's when they shot him down," Nicks said.
Police have not confirmed any of the eyewitness accounts.
