A gunman killed three people today before cops fatally shot him in an Aurora Colo., townhome just five miles from the scene of the “Dark Knight” movie theater massacre, authorities said.
SWAT team members from the Aurora Police Department shot the suspected killer after he fired a gun at them from a second-story window just before 9 a.m., cops said.
The gunman was pronounced dead in the upstairs bedroom.
The killings came less than six months after James Holmes allegedly slaughtered 12 people in a crowded movie theater in that same town. There was no apparent connection, cops said.
Police were called after gunshots were heard at the home at about 3 a.m., Aurora Police Sgt. Cassidee Carlson said.
The suspect was acting “very irrationally,” cops said – and repeatedly hung up on negotiators who tried for hours to coax him from the house.
Just before 8 a.m., SWAT members broke out a window in the house, so the gunman fired at them. No police were injured, and cops did not fire back.
The SWAT team then fired tear gas in the house and continued to try to draw him from the home.
“It didn’t have a great effect on him — he was able to remain in the home,” Carlson told The Post. “There was a lot of gas released in that house. We did it in different stages in hopes of pushing him outside. That he was able to remain in there might allude to his mindset.”
All three adult victims – two men and one woman — appeared to have been killed before police arrived, Carlson said, and they seemed to know each other, although it wasn’t clear if they were related.
A fifth person escaped after she jumped from a window, the Denver Post reported. That person was uninjured.
The motive in the shootings was unclear.
Neighbor Shaunna Bustios said that cops were trying to coax a man named Sonny out of the building using a bullhorn.
“Sonny, if you come out with your hands up, you won’t be hurt and we’ll get you the help you need,” Bustios said. “We have your wife Stephanie here.’”
“After a little while had passed, I did hear three gunshots.”
Another neighbor said she also heard cops speaking to a man named Sonny.
“‘We know you’ve been up for four days. What’s done is done. Come out and we’ll get you some help,'” Jennifer Williams told The Denver Post, adding that cops pleaded to let them help “Anthony, Chris and Stacey.”
“We kept hearing they kept telling them to ‘please come out the front door, nobody will hurt you. If you come out now nobody will hurt you — you’ll be safe. Let us get in to the hostages,’” Jen Miller, 65, who lives a half-block away, told The Post.
Later, the SWAT team came to break in, she said.
“The swat team drove their truck up and broke the window and I heard some gunshots when that happened,” said Miller.
“They threw some tear gas in there and I heard a few more gun shots. And then it was pretty quiet. The policemen were all standing in their same places. All of a sudden they started backing ambulances in. They didn’t bring anybody out and the ambulances left. We figured it didn’t have a good ending.”