SONNA – An 18-year-old gunman has killed three people before police shot him dead outside a church in the state of New Mexico.
Several people, including two police officers, were also wounded by the armed teenager who went on a shooting rampage on Monday in a residential area of Farmington, New Mexico, about 290km (180 miles) northwest of Albuquerque, police said.
Farmington Deputy Police Chief Baric Crum said in a news briefing that a total of nine people, not counting the suspect, were victims of the shooting, but it was not clear whether that tally included the three people who were killed.
Officers responding to several calls about a shooting found “a chaotic scene” where a man was firing at people on a residential street, Crum said.
The gunman, identified only as an 18-year-old, was believed to have acted alone, police said. There was no information provided about the three people killed, and no motive was readily apparent.
“We are still trying to determine why he was in this neighbourhood,” Crum told reporters.
Some of the incident was captured in video footage posted to the social media platform TikTok and confirmed as authentic by Farmington police spokesperson Shanice Gonzales. It shows a man dressed in black pacing around a driveway outside the First Church of Christ Scientist, carrying what appears to be a handgun before he is later seen being shot dead by police in front of the building.
