Copley, Ohio - A gunman shot and killed seven people on Sunday, including an 11-year-old child, before police shot him dead in a small town in Ohio, police and local media report.
The rampage - which was apparently rooted in a domestic dispute - left bodies strewn across an otherwise quiet neighbourhood in Copley Township beginning at about 11am on Sunday morning.
Gilbert Elie came outside at the sound of the shots and moaning to discover the bloodied bodies of two of his neighbours - a woman and her husband - lying in their driveway.
He went to check on them and saw a woman lying over a teenaged girl - as if to protect her - inside a black minivan. They both looked dead and Elie called to his wife to call the police.
Then another neighbour came outside and asked him what was going on.
“I was talking to her when her boyfriend came out of the house behind her and shot her three or four times,” he told the Akron Beacon Herald.
Elie jumped behind a car and when he peeked out from behind it, he saw the woman “fall off the porch and down the steps.”
He then heard the welcome sound of police sirens, along with more shots and the sound of people running behind the houses through the nearby woods.
Police arriving at the scene spotted the gunman fleeing and took chase.
The suspect then “engaged the officers in gunfire and the suspect has been killed as well,” Copley Police Chief Michael Mier told the paper.
“Our job is extremely complicated right now because we have four scenes that we're processing,” he later told reporters.
“We understand that at some point in time the shooter was chasing somebody.”
Mier said the toll could rise as high as nine because another badly wounded victim was taken to hospital.
Friends and neighbours held a solemn candlelight vigil for the victims on Sunday evening in a local park. The streets leading to the shooting scenes remained barricaded by police.
“These were great people. They would give you anything,” said Trisha Tipple, who knew the family because their children raced bikes together.
“It's just surreal. We're so numb, we don't know what to say anymore.”
Stephanie Luecke helped organise the vigil even though she did not know any of the victims.
“Copley is tightly woven. If you live here all your life, you know someone who knows someone,” she told AFP, adding that she was deeply saddened and overwhelmed by the news.
Police have not yet released the identities of the victims. However, mourners at the vigil identified them as members of the Johnson family.
Several teenagers, who were too distraught to comment further, said they were there to remember their friend Autumn Johnson who attended the local high school.
The school's superintendant was also at the vigil and said grief counsellors would be available at the school on Monday even though classes won't resume until later this month.
Five of the victims - whom neighbours said were all part of one family - were found at one home on Schocalog Road, WEWS news reported. A sixth was found in a different home on the same street.
The seventh victim was found in a home on Goodenough Avenue and an eighth victim was found somewhere between those locations.
Copley Township, located about 80km south of Cleveland, has a population of about 14 000, according to the Township's website. - Sapa-AFP