PALM BAY, Fla. -- Police and military troops stormed a teargas-filled supermarket Friday and seized the mad killer of six people before he could find more hostages huddled in a freezer.
The final toll in the massacre at Sable Palm Square shopping center was six dead -- two of them Palm Bay policemen -- and 14 injured, two critically.
Police Chief Charles Simmons said William Bryan Cruse, 60, a heavyset, greying man who lived a mile from the supermarket, was charged with six counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder and other charges including kidnapping.
But more than eight hours after Cruse was found huddled in the back of the store, Simmons said police were unsure what triggered the random killings.
'We just don't know what happened and we probably won't know for quite a while,' Simmons said.
Cruse, he said, 'was mad.'
'This could have happened in Mayberry, R.F.D.,' the chief said.
Palm Bay is on Florida's East Coast, 30 miles south of the Kennedy Space Center.
Friday afternoon Cruse was taken 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. Two armed officers rode in the van and an unmarked car followed.
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 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.
Stein appointed public defender Valerie Brown to represent him and ruled he was not to be questioned without his lawyer present.
The violence began several blocks from the shopping center in Cruse's neighborhood, where he shot a 14-year-old neighbor, John Rich, who was in fair condition Friday with a wound to the hip, police said.
'My daughter saw the kid go down,' said neighbor Theodore Bartholomew. 'He was playing basketball, which he always does. I don't think he was riled at the kid. I think he shot him accidentally.'
Bartholomew said Cruse might have been angry at two other boys who made noise near his house and shot Rich instead.
Neighbors said they complained to police about Cruse's violent temper for months and said he occasionally fired a gun into the air and yelled at neighborhood children.
'Someone said he was just a time bomb waiting to go off,' said Dick Burkhart, another neighbor.
The bloodbath in the parking lot began at 6:21 p.m., and Cruse killed Ron Grogan, 27, and Gerald Johnson, 28, the first two Palm Bay policemen to arrive.
'The suspect, armed with a high-powered rifle -- .223-caliber - shot and killed the first officer by shooting through the windshield eight or more times,' Simmons said at a mid-morning news conference. 'The second officer was killed as he was exiting his vehicle to engage the suspect in fire.'
Leaving the pavement strewn with the dead and wounded, Cruse took refuge in the Winn-Dixie store, packed with panicked shoppers.
'Many, many people were in Winn-Dixie, and there were literally hundreds of hostages at one time,' Simmons said.
Throughout the eight-hour seige, Simmons said, 'We maintained communication with the suspect, who ranged from melancholy to fits of rage.'
But early Friday, a woman who escaped or was allowed to leave the store -- Simmons was unsure which -- told officers Cruse was unaware of other people hiding in the store.
'We went in because hostages in there had not been located by the suspect,' Simmons said.
Local SWAT team officers and assault troops from nearby Patrick Air Force Base laid out a plan of attack and, according to Mayor Harold Bryant, knew 'exactly what they were supposed to do, even to the degree that a part of it was rehearsed behind the K-Mart store.'
After lobbing tear gas into the store, the raiders apparently blew open a door with a percussion grenade and swarmed in. Simmons said they found three people hiding in a freezer.
Simmons said that contrary to reports Thursday night, Cruse was the only gunman who shot.
'Witnesses noticed we arrested another person on the scene with a gun. He just happened to have a gun and was not working with Cruse,' Simmons said.
Simmons said the man was incoherent and had some contact with Cruse - he called it 'a conversation' -- but said it was minor. 'This guy had no connection to Cruse, other than he had a gun, too,' Simmons said.
Simmons said Cruse had a gray bag of ammunition and fired more than 40 rounds with semi-automatic rifle and a revolver. Simmons said about 100 people were removed from restaurants and businesses.
Dean Carlton, an aerospace worker who lives nearby and watched from a vantage point overlooking the darkened shopping center, said the attack began with the muffled thud of tear gas canisters.
Then 'There was a big blast! It sounded more like a high-powered shotgun,' he said. 'I see some movement. There's another big blast and the light went out. Eight cops are running around behind this building.'
Later, he said, 'Two policemen are leading a woman, they're running. They're running just below us.'
Carlton said he then saw policemen scaling down the side of the building with ropes. Then lights flared on all over the shopping center and police cruisers and firetrucks began rolling toward the supermarket.
'It's over,' he reported.
There were persistent reports that more than one gunman was involved, and Brown said earlier that a man had been taken into custody at the scene, but insisted she did not know how he was involved.
A man named Roger Evans, who lives near the shopping center, told Orlando television station WCPX that Crews came running through his yard with a gun Thursday afternoon. He said he saw Crews fire at two children, wounding one, then kill a dog. The dog's owner then came rushing out of his house with a gun and set out in pursuit of Crews, Evans said.
One witness, Stephanie Call, an employee at a Hallmark card shop, said, 'I heard a car come to a complete stop and squeal. People screamed and that's when I heard a shot.
'I jumped, and I ran to the door, opened the door. And no more than 20 feet away from me this guy is shooting at anything in sight. He didn't care. He wasn't aiming, he wasn't shooting at anything.'
Call said she saw a small boy, about 7 or 8 years old, shot, and than a man she described as being 28 or 29 years old who was pushing a grocery cart.
'He had just been shopping at Publix. (The gunman) shot him down, and later the rescue squad came and did CPR on him,' Call said.
Police radio reports monitored at the scene said the gunman had been drinking beer for most of the day, is a member of the National Rifle Association and had at least three high-powered rifles.
The worst mass murder in U.S. history came on July 18, 1984, when James O. Huberty slaughtered 21 people in a McDonald's restaurant in San Ysidro, Calif.
Police barricades kept hundreds of bystanders and reporters about a half-mile from the shopping plaza, and a military helicopter from nearby Patrick Air Force Base landed across the street in a parking lot, disgorging SWAT team members.
'It was pop, pop, pop, like the Fourth of July,' said Gene Romanelli, owner of Leaning Tower Pizza two stores away from the Winn-Dixie. 'Myself, I heard 25 to 30 shots in just a few seconds.
'In the beginning, my opinion was that it had to be more than one person because the shots started out near me and in a period of what seemed to be 30 or 40 seconds, the shots were ringing out across the street,' Romanelli said. 'There were people dead on the sidewalk.'
Palm Bay is a small bedroom community on the Florida Space Coast, about 5 miles south of Melbourne. The shopping center is situated on both sides of U.S. Highway 1 and contains 30 to 40 stores, including Publix and Winn-Dixie supermarkets, and a Burger King restaurant.
'A police car pulling in, he shot into the car and hit the officer in the head,' said Al Erber, owner of the Sable Palm Laundromat. 'He was slumped over the wheel.' Another prowl car pulled up behind the first, and the gunman fired at the officer as he got out of the car, wounding him in the leg, he said.
Jennifer Wilson, 23, assistant manager of the Burger King, said, 'The guy was across the street at the Publix and started opening fire at the Publix and worked his way across the street, and is now in the Winn-Dixie. There was probably 30 or 40 shots heard throughout the parking lot ...
'The first thing I saw was that people out on the patio (of the Burger King) started running inside. They said, 'Call 911! There's shots being fired!'
'You could see mass hysteria,' Wilson said. 'People were running around the parking lot. People just scattered. It just reached the point where people just sat underneath their cars and sat low until they could get out.'