Man kills 3 and himself at US mall
2012-10-22 07:28
Milwaukee - A gunman opened fire on Sunday at the suburban Milwaukee beauty salon where his spouse worked, killing three people and wounding four others before taking his own life, police said.
This came two weeks after he was accused of slashing his wife's car tyres.
The suspect was identified as 45-year-old Radcliffe Haughton, a resident of Brown Deer, Wisconsin, who had been placed under a restraining order and directed to surrender his firearms to local authorities this month in connection with a domestic abuse case involving his wife.
"We believe this incident was domestic violence-related," Brookfield Police Chief Daniel Tushaus said at a news conference.
All three of those shot to death at the Azana Salon & Spa were female, Tushaus said. Their ages and identities were not immediately provided, and the police chief would not say whether Haughton's wife, who was a spa employee, was among the victims.
Haughton was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at the crime scene, police said.
Gun violence
The shooting marked the second outburst of gun violence at a US beauty spa in a matter of days. On Thursday, a gunman opened fire at a salon in suburban Orlando, Florida, killing three women and wounding a fourth, his wife, before fleeing and committing suicide at a nearby residence. The suspect in that shooting had likewise been ordered to keep away from his spouse.
The Wisconsin shooting followed an October 4 incident in which Haughton slashed the tyres on his wife's car, leading to his arrest on suspicion of vandalism, Tushaus said.
Four days later, his wife was granted a temporary restraining order against Haughton related to domestic abuse in Milwaukee County, Tushaus said. On October 18, a court injunction was issued barring Haughton from possessing firearms, and he was ordered to hand over any weapons he had to the county sheriff.
The last few months have been marked by a string of mass shootings in the United States. On September 27, a disgruntled former employee killed six people and took his own life in a shooting rampage at a Minneapolis sign company from which he had been fired.
In August, two people were killed and nine wounded in a work-related shooting near the Empire State Building in New York City. The Manhattan incident followed mass shootings in a Colorado movie theatre that killed 12 and wounded 58 and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that claimed seven lives, including that of the gunman.
Nationally, there were 458 workplace homicides in 2011 and 518 in 2010, according to US Bureau of Labour Statistics data.
