Gunman opens fire at US theatre

Officials secure the scene outside the movie theatre in Lafayette. Photo: Reuters
Officials secure the scene outside the movie theatre in Lafayette. Photo: Reuters

A gunman has opened fire at a movie theatre in the US state of Louisiana killing two people and injuring seven others before taking his own life, police say.

The shooting in Lafayette on Thursday took place during a 7pm (local time) showing of Train Wreck, almost three years to the day after a massacre at a cinema in Aurora, Colorado that killed 12 people.

Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft said two people died in the hail of bullets before the 58-year-old suspect killed himself with a handgun as officers rushed to the scene shortly after 7.30pm.

Seven people suffered injuries ranging from non life-threatening to critical, he said.

Authorities said they knew the gunman's identity but were not releasing his name yet. They offered no immediate motive and did not disclose any clues they might have found.

"The shooter is deceased. We may never know," Craft said, adding that the man appeared to have a criminal history that he described as "pretty old."

Police said that bomb-sniffing dogs had singled out a backpack inside the theatre and "suspicious" items inside the suspect's car.

Investigators also headed to the gunman's home. His body remained inside the theatre several hours later. None of the victims, who were described as ranging in age from teens to early 60s, were immediately identified by authorities.

Witness Keifer Sanders told CNN that about 100 people were in the theatre when the shooting began.

Another witness, Katie Domingue, told the local Advertiser newspaper that the gunman was an older white man who stood up in the theatre and began shooting. "He wasn't saying anything. I didn't hear anybody screaming either."

Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has travelled to Lafayette, a city of about 120,000 people roughly 90km southwest of Baton Rouge.

"As governor, as a father and as a husband, whenever we hear about these senseless acts of violence it makes us both furious and sad at the same time," he said.

Jindal said that two of the wounded victims were teachers and that one of them managed to pull a fire alarm in the theatre after being shot.

Several mass shootings 

Thursday's shooting comes three years after a gunman opened fire at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado, during a screening of the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others.

James Holmes was convicted last week on 165 counts including murder and attempted murder in the rampage on July 20 in 2012. Jurors in that case were trying to determine if Holmes should face the death penalty or life in prison.

The US has witnessed several mass shootings in the last two months.

A gunman is accused of a racially motivated shooting at a black church in South Carolina that killed nine church members in June.

Last week, a gunman attacked military offices in Tennessee, killing five US servicemen.

In a BBC interview excerpt that aired on Thursday before the shooting, President Barack Obama said his biggest frustration was the failure to pass "common-sense gun safety laws" in the US.

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