Three killed in US spa shooting

Three people were killed and four others injured after a gunman burst into a day spa in the midwestern US state of Wisconsin and opened fire Sunday, police said.

The suspect -- identified as 45-year-old Radcliffe Haughton -- was later found dead at the scene in Brookfield, a suburb of Milwaukee, police told AFP. He was believed to have shot himself.

The mass shooting was the second in the US state this year. In August, six people were killed in a rampage at a Sikh temple in another suburb of Milwaukee, Oak Creek. The gunman in that incident killed himself.

Police chief Daniel Tushaus provided few details on the motives of Haughton, but local media reported that he was in the midst of an ugly divorce from his wife, who worked at the Azana spa.

The woman had gotten a judge to issue an order of protection banning Haughton from contacting her and ordering him to hand in his guns, TMJ4 News reported.

The suspect's father, Radcliffe Haughton Sr, told the network: "This is not the way I raised my son... My son is facing a domestic problem. Things happen, and some people cannot take it."

Tushaus said earlier that Haughton had left behind what appeared to be an improvised explosive device, which prevented police from searching the entire two-story building.

The four people injured in Sunday's shooting are not believed to be critically hurt. However, one woman who was shot in the neck may be around six months pregnant, TMJ4 reported.

Television footage showed more than a dozen emergency vehicles in the parking lot of a shopping mall across the street from the spa, at least part of which has been evacuated. Tactical police teams were also on the scene.

The White House said President Barack Obama had been briefed about the incident, adding: "The president and first lady's thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this horrible shooting and their families."

"Senseless acts of violence leave us with heavy hearts and many questions," Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said in a statement.

"Our state will stand with the victims and their families, and we will provide them with the law enforcement and community support they need to heal in the coming days."

Witness Christopher Pfeiffer said he was on his way to a bookstore in the mall when he saw a young, barefoot woman running in the parking lot.

"She was screaming, yelling, crying hysterical. She was pleading for help," Pfeiffer, 47, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"She kept saying, 'My mother was shot.' And she mentioned that there was a gunman."

David Gosh said he was on his way home from duck hunting when he saw a woman run out into the road screaming and pounding on cars for help.

Then he saw a large man with a handgun chase after her, but luckily the police arrived with sirens blaring. Gosh said he saw the man run back into the building or possibly into the woods nearby.

"He was looking for an escape route," Gosh told the paper.

Gosh's father, John, said he saw two wounded women taken out of the spa. One appeared to have been shot in the leg and the other in the back, he told the newspaper.

The Journal Sentinel published a photo on its website of two barefoot women in white spa robes standing in the spa's parking lot near a fire truck and ambulance. Two women standing nearby were clutching their heads and waving their hands as they spoke together.

Just down the road, less than a mile away, is the Sheraton Hotel where seven people were killed and four more wounded at a shooting in 2005. The shooter, who opened fire on a Living Church of God service held at the hotel, then committed suicide.

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