Six people were killed, including the shooter and two police officers, after a gunman opened fire at a meeting of the Kirkwood City Council in suburban St. Louis, Mo., Thursday night.
Witnesses say the gunman was a local contractor who had been feuding with the Kirkwood city council in the past and had twice been arrested for disorderly conduct in 2006 and then suing the city of Kirkwood .
On Thursday night the
gunman stormed into the council meeting and opened fire, killing three at the meeting including council officials and Mayor Mike Swoboda, who was shot in the head and was in critical condition, according to the authorities and one other was wounded and brought to the hospital.
No word on the second persons condition as of yet.
He also killed one police officer inside the City Hall building and another in the parking lot of the Kirkwood police station before he was shot and killed by police, ending this deadly rampage.
A correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Janet McNichols, who was in the city council meeting when the shooting took place, identified the gunman as Charles Lee Thornton, the newspaper reported.
Police have not yet verified the identity of the suspect.
St. Louis County Police spokeswoman Tracy Panus, via
My Fox St. Louis, told reporters that while the gunmen was firing at the council members, he was screaming "Shoot the mayor!", which is confirmed by statements made my Ms. McNichols.
McNichols further reports that the shooter fired at City Attorney John Hessel, who tried to fight off the attacker by throwing chairs.
On
The Post Dispatch website, McNichols writes
"I laid on my stomach waiting to get shot. Oh, God, it was a horror."
Gerald Thornton, the alleged suspects brother, stated to CNN affiliate KMOV, that his brother had serious issues with the city government, further stating
"The only way that I can put it in a context that you might understand is that my brother went to war tonight with the people that were of the government that was putting torment and strife into his life."
And he had spoke on it as best he could in the courts and they denied him all access to the rights of protection, and therefore he took it upon himself to go to war and end the issue."
In the 2006 lawsuit against the city, Charles Lee Thornton has claimed his First Amendment rights had been denied to him when he asked to speak during public-comment portions of the 2006 meetings on certain subjects, but instead spoke on what he alleged was harassment of him by city officials, according to an article written Thursday before the shooting by the First Amendment Center, a group that says it works to preserve First Amendment freedoms .
Also reported by the center, U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry, ruled against Thornton's claim, saying
"Thornton engaged in personal attacks against the mayor, Kirkwood and the city council. ... Because Thornton does not have a First Amendment right to engage in irrelevant debate and to voice repetitive, personal, virulent attacks against Kirkwood and its city officials during the comment portion of a city council public hearing, his claim fails as a matter of law."
An acquaintance of Thornton who had known him for 15 years, Bill Reineke, said that about three months ago he started sensing a change in Thorton's behavior and that he had begun to hold grudges against the city and would periodically go to city hall during meetings and would talk about the "plantation mentality of the mayor and board."
Doug Vaughn,sportscaster for Channel 4, attended high school with Thornton and has run into him through the years also says Thornton's behavior had changed after police cracked down on his parking of vehicles for his construction company outside his home in Meacham Park, saying that he has "felt harassed."
"
He was more than a critic," Vaughn said.
"It got to where he was showing up at every council meeting and trying to dominate everything. He kind of lost his mind."
Dorren Thornton, the shooters sister-in-law, who refers to him by the nickname of "Cookie",
claims that he never got mad, was a people person and was known through his church to be a No. 1 kind of man.
Thornton 's mother claims that Kirkwood officials had kept after her son, giving him tickets for everything they could, and said she never thought her son was capable of this type of violence but described the events as
“an act of God, just like a storm or a tornado.”
Missouri Governor Matt Blunt condemned the senseless and horrific crime at an open government meeting and stated
"I join Missourians tonight in praying for the victims, their families and friends and everyone in the community of Kirkwood."
