TEXAS: At least five people were killed and 21 wounded by a man who randomly fired at motorists in the Texan town of Odessa in the southern United States before being shot dead by police on Saturday.
The gunman hijacked a US postal truck and opened fire at random in the US state of Texas Saturday, shooting dead at least five people and wounding many others before dying in a shootout with officers.
“We have at least 21 victims, 21 shot and at least five deaths at this stage,” a police spokesman for the city of Odessa told reporters.
According to the mayor of nearby Midland, interviewed on Fox News, three police officers are among the wounded.
Police identified the suspect as a white man in his mid-30s, but could not yet name him or say why he carried out the attack in the West Texas cities of Midland and Odessa.
The umpteenth shooting came less than a month after a gunman shot dead 22 people in another Texas town, El Paso, about 500 kilometres west of Odessa.
The police in this town of about 100,000 had initially reported “an individual (possibly two) rolling in Odessa shooting at random people”. She had asked the locals not to take the road and be extremely careful.
The shooting began when a patrol car attempted to stop a vehicle on I-20, between Odessa and the nearby town of Midland, but “the driver, the only occupant of the car, pointed a rifle by the rear window of his vehicle and fired several shots at the police patrol, “said the Texas Public Security Department in a statement.
A police officer was wounded and the shooter managed to flee “while continuing to shoot innocent people”, riddling several cars with bullets.
“I just learned that a friend has died,” Odessa Mayor David Turner told Fox News. “That coward stopped next to the car where the Mayor’s friend was stopped at a stop, with his family, and opened fire,” said Mr Turner.
He was later killed in an exchange of fire with the police. The reasons for these killings are not known.
