Three people have been killed injured including a deputy sheriff in another shooting in the United States - this time at a courthouse in Michigan.
The gunman was an inmate who managed to steal a firearm from a law enforcement officer at the Berrien County courthouse in St Joseph, a town on the shores of Lake Michigan, across the lake from Chicago.
The attacker, who has not been identified, was able to break free from a Berrien County sheriff's deputy and a bailiff in a corridor leading to the courtroom about 2.25pm on Monday (local time).
Sheriff Paul Bailey said two bailiffs were fatally shot, while a civilian and a sheriff's deputy were injured. The gunman was then shot dead by a law enforcement officer.
The deputy and civilian were both being treated at Lakeland Regional Medical Center, he said. Their conditions were not known.
"At about 2.25 we had a disturbance on the third floor of the courthouse. A person has shot two bailiffs, they are both deceased, and a deputy sheriff who is at the hospital right now being treated in the emergency room," he said.
"The suspect has been shot and killed," he added, saying the death of his friends was "terrible."
Buildings in the area were put on lockdown after the shooting.
"MSP (Michigan State Police) has secured the scene at the Berrien County courthouse and started its investigation into the shooting that occurred this afternoon," Governor Rick Snyder said in a tweet.
Public information officers at Michigan State Police and the Berrien County Sheriff's Department declined to give any additional details.
However, Chris Gautz, a public information officer for the Michigan Department of Corrections, tweeted that all Department of Corrections staff are safe and accounted for.
Monday's shootings came four days after five officers in Dallas were killed by a sniper who claimed to be motivated by police use of lethal force against African-Americans.
A former US Army Reservist opened fire on police at the end of a march protesting the killings by officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside St Paul, Minnesota, in an attack that he told police negotiators was intended to kill "white people," especially police.
Monday's attack injected a new note of fear into two years of largely peaceful protests across the US over the high-profile police killings of black men in cities including Ferguson, Missouri, and Chicago.
President Barack Obama and others have reiterated calls for stricter guns laws after a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, last month, but many conservatives responded that such measures could infringe on the US Constitution's protection of the right to bear arms.
